Who decides how disability is represented in stock photography?
I’m working on revamping our customer personas, so I’ve spent a lot of time lately looking at stock photography. As accessibility and disability inclusion are important to me, I’ve noticed that it is not easy to find stock photos which represent disabilities. This is problematic in three main ways. Overall, disability is just not represented enough. Second, disability photos tend to make stereotypical assumptions and third, there is a lack of actual disabled individuals being used in the photography.
Lack of representation
Despite the fact that 15% of the population globally has some type of disability, representation is not equal. Google “office meetings” or “people working” and you will see groups of young people gathered around tables or desks, looking pensive or maybe laughing and high-fiving or standing at the water cooler. (I admit I have a lot of fun at work but I am pretty sure I have never high-fived anyone in the office. Maybe a fist bump.) But where are the colleagues with disabilities? In the images above, there is not a single person who is visibly disabled.
Part of the problem could be attributed the disability employment gap — for example in the UK disabled individuals have an employment rate that is 28.6% points lower than their non-disabled peers. But if we don’t see disabled colleagues at work, this is not normalised when we think about what an office looks like. Not to mention the accessibility of these locations as represented in the photos — overly bright rooms, people crowded around a display monitor or open plan office, standing in front of a white board — I could go on, but you get my point.
Stereotypical assumptions
So what does disability “look like”? Turning to Google once again, searching for “disability employment” brings up pictures of employees in wheelchairs. According to estimates, only 1.9% of the UK population are wheelchair users and less than 1% of Americans are wheelchair users. Why the over-representation?
Maybe because it’s easy to see a wheelchair. But what about invisible disabilities, including chronic pain or illness, neurodiversities such as dyslexia, ADHD or autism, aphasia, brain injuries, or mental health issues? I’m frequently told that my son doesn’t “look autistic” — what does that even mean? In protest and solidarity, thousands of Twitter users went online in 2017 to share what #invisiblydisabledlookslike.
Even more surprising— stock photography featuring disabilities tends to show people at doctors offices or needing help from someone else. Or inspiration porn — showing disability as a tragedy, as an uplifting moral message or objectification.
The problem with stock photography is that it relies upon contributors to provide images of what they think will sell, leaving the process open to the biases and assumptions of the individual photographer. As Luke Winkie discovered in his interview with stock photographers — “anyone with a camera could shoot royalty-free photos, upload them to microstock servers, and sell them for a few bucks to customers all over the world.”
Photographer Tony Northrup described the process as photographers going through multiple iterations:
“….Job interview where both people are happy. Job interview where one person is nervous. Job interview where one person is angry and one person is concerned. Job interview with thumbs-up toward the camera. Job interview with two thumbs-up toward the camera. You set up the whole set and run through it with one model, and then swap out the models.”
You can see where this is heading — unfortunately this happens when representing disabilities too. You can find photo sets where people swap out who is sitting in the wheelchair such as this series or this series or this series or this series or this series or this series…..erm….hang on a minute….Maybe this problem is bigger than I thought….
Lack of actual disabled models being used
So, it’s clear that we have a representation gap due to a lack of visibility, an over-reliance on stereotypes, and an idea that it’s easy to play the part of disability on camera. Even television has this problem— despite an overall increase of disabled characters on scripted broadcast shows in 2019–2020, many of these characters are played by actors who are not disabled themselves.
Disabled models do appear with more frequency these days as companies aim for inclusivity. Sometimes this lack of representation inspires change in photographers, such as Radler’s photo series focusing on individuals enjoying time with friends or family, at work, on a date — just every day life. Like Radler, other photographers have been creating collections of disability representation in stock photography. The next time you are looking for disability representation in stock imagery, hopefully the following list will be a good starting point.
Sources for disability stock photos
Disabled and Here (free) is a collection of photos created as stock images appeared to be “focusing primarily on children & elderly folk who all happen to be white…Disabled And Here is a reclaiming of our depiction, featuring disabled BIPOC with different diagnoses (or lack thereof), body sizes/types, sexual orientations, and gender identities.”
Disabled and Here features a collection of LGBTQ+ themed, Lifestyle, Social and Work featuring disabled models. What I like about this collection is that it includes a variety of disability support aides, including individuals using canes, compression gloves, headphones/ear defenders, filtering masks, a prosthetic leg and a mobility scooter.
Disability:IN (free) curated a collection to “empower business to achieve disability inclusion and equality” by using the images in recruitment and marketing materials. The collection was directed by Jordan Nicholson, a photographer with TAR syndrome. Nicholson states that representation is important to him because “growing up I never really saw people who looked like me, or different kinds of bodies in general…I think I’m just realising how powerful it is when you actually start making these kinds of efforts.” What I like about these photos is that they are representative of a business setting, and include individuals using sign language, a braille display, various types of mobility scooters and a guide dog.
Canva’s Natural Women collection (free but sign up required) features women with a variety of body types. Elle Hughes created the collection to represent the diversity in women’s bodies — “…the acceptance and celebration of our bodies, exactly the way they are, regardless of gender norms and societal standards of beauty. By promoting body positivity, we aim to celebrate our body’s unique beauty and make the world more inclusive and diverse.”
Hughes put an ad on a model finding site describing the project, and was inundated with hundreds of responses by women who wanted to take part. What I like about these photos are that they are inclusive of different bodies such as women with cutting scars, excess skin from weight loss, and hair loss due to chemotherapy. For additional disability photos, you can also try Canva’s main collection, but these images are largely wheelchair based.
The Getty Images Disability Collection (paid) is a collection in partnership with Getty Images, the disability community and Verizon, which aims to “thoughtfully portray disability as just one part of a person’s complex identity”. Getty put together the collection after seeing searches on their site for terms like wheelchair (371%) or autism (434%) increase from 2016 to 2017, and launched the series on Global Accessibility Awareness Day in 2018. Photos in this series also include work by Jordan Nicholson, mentioned above.
What I like about the Getty collection is the breadth of photos available, although the images largely focus on lifestyle and may be less appropriate for business (B2B) personas. I also like that Getty’s images do include a good balance of disabled women and men. Getty’s site is not as search friendly as other sites which offers filters based on photographer or series of photos.
Similarly, Project #ShowUs (paid), is curated by Getty Images, GirlGaze and Dove and includes over 5000 images taken by 133 female-identifying photographers across the world. The project challenges others to “use imagery that feels genuine and represents the women I know”, “to challenge beauty stereotypes”, “to show a wider range of beauty in marketing and campaigns” and “to hire more female photographers”. Although the #ShowUs collection is not focused on disability, it does include a few disabled models.
Stocksy (paid) has created an Everyday People with Disabilities collection, thanks to the work of Gary Radler (mentioned above) and others. The collection has over 2000 images and contains beautifully shot representations of a variety of both work and lifestyle related photos and offers a nice range of individuals with invisible disabilities and limb differences— another underrepresented group.
PhotoAbility (paid) provides commercial, creative and editorial images featuring disabled models. Their collection is impressive, with over 10,000 images representing a variety of disabilities. I like the fact that the site is easily searchable with filters, and contains information about both the photographer and the model. Deborah Davis (pictured left), founder of PhotoAbility, also has another photography site, PUSHLiving Photos. It showcases hundreds of stock photos featuring disabled models, however as the name suggests, it is heavily focused on wheelchair users.
It’s nice to read behind the scenes stories about photographers and the models on PhotoAbility’s blog. Overall I feel some of the images do come off as a little unrealistic or patronising — for example there is a collection of a young man in a wheelchair. He is in a business suit, but appears to be hanging out in a park by himself — did he get lost on his way to a meeting? The photographer discusses that they arrived at these images after having difficulty securing access to shoot in a pub or restaurant. But as Radler mentions above — don’t make the disability the central focus of the image, as this just makes things seem forced and inauthentic.
Disability Images (paid) includes images of disabled individuals, largely contributed by photographer Mark Hunt and includes representations of individuals at home, playing sports, in work or school, using transportation or in relationships. Although the collection is vast (nearly 7000 photos available), some of the photos are tagged using medical model and non-person first language which can be quite offensive to the disability community, including “deformity”, “disorder” and “vaccine”.
Improving representation
Although I strongly believe that creatives and artists should be paid for their work, it’s frustrating that very few free sites have disability photos, meaning it is easier for individuals to find free images which are not inclusive. For startups or those with small budgets relying on these free sites, there is a higher chance they will choose images which are not representative.
So how can we improve disability representation?
- Include images of disabled individuals in your UX or marketing work. (And don’t forget to make this work accessible too.)
- Ensure representations are authentic and not stereotypical or “putting on” a disability.
- Support the work of disabled models and photographers.
- Create and share your own disability stock photos for others to use.
If you can’t find the stock images you are looking for, contact agencies with disabled models to commission your own shots such as VisABLE, Zebedee or Models of Diversity in the UK, or Mediability for international. If you are a disabled model and would like to register, you can contact Zebedee or VisABLE with enquiries.
Free sites likes Pexels and Unsplash are often used for persona photos. By adding photos of disabled models to these sites, we can all help improve the accuracy of representation of disability in our personas and other marketing materials. Interestingly, Burst (free) has a very small American Sign Language (ASL) collection. Not a lot, but it’s a start — let’s encourage more of this.
I’d love to hear about your experiences in looking for disabled representation in stock photography or how you can help increase diversity in stock photography. You can also follow the conversation of disability and representation on Twitter to see what others have to say.
Alicia is a strategy and innovation consultant in the UK. Follow her on LinkedIn for more stories about customer experience, business design, creativity and innovation, strategic change and inclusive design.
