Ready & Abled

After disabled model Tanja Kiewitz got the courage to pose with her missing limb to recreate Eva Herzigova’s infamous Wonderbra ad, she thanked her friends and “a couple of glasses of wine,” according to Huffington Post. You might remember Herzigova: A voluptuous brunette wearing nothing but a black brassiere dares readers with the caption: “Look me in the eyes … I said the eyes.” Likewise, readers can’t keep their eyes off Kiewitz’s arm, which ends at the elbow — but that’s O.K. It’s for a good cause, as she’s working to raise money for Belgian disability awareness group CAP48.

In what the disability community has been saying all along, Kiewitz told GlobalPost in an interview that “it would be good if handicapped people started to be used to advertise other things.” (Handicapped is a term commonly used in Europe). “Why shouldn’t somebody with a disability be a model? It would make a change from those models who all look alike. Why don’t we have more people in wheelchairs speaking on TV, they can speak as well as anybody else,” she says.

More opportunities for people with disabilities

Lots of opportunities come to mind, from models to actors to politicians. Today, Jonathan Phang, the host of Britain’s Missing Top Model, began backing a campaign calling for the fashion industry to use disabled models on the catwalk and in ad campaigns. And earlier this year Debenhams, a famous U.K. department store, became the first retailer of its kind to use disabled models in campaign photography. Debenhams has just announced they are supporting the Disabled & Sexy fashion show, which will be held October 25 in London’s Notting Hill.

“We need to look beyond stereotypes. Not only to encourage the fashion world to change their thinking, but to help raise a deeper understanding about the prejudices young, beautiful, disabled women have to overcome every day,” Chang says.

Hollywood and the disabled

The next industry that should pick up cues Is Hollywood. Fox’s Glee has cast a singing and dancing wheelchair user who is not disabled. However, there are two actors with Down’s syndrome on the show. Out of a total of 587 characters on television shows this season, only six roles have disabilities and only one role is played by a disabled actor, according to Hollywood Reporter. That actor is Robert David Hall, a double leg amputee, who plays a coroner on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Hollywood says it’s not always easy to find talented disabled people to fill their cast and crew. ABC, for instance, recently put out a Facebook casting call for a deaf actress and two male deaf actors for a new family series.

It’s Hollywood’s job to make art reflect life, but also for life to reflect art. Forrest Gump, I am Sam and Rain Man were all superb movies, played with aplomb by able-bodied actors. This is likely more a reflection of the business model of Hollywood; not wanting to risk a typically overblown movie budget on an unknown actor who has a disability.

Companies step up disability advertising

In the consumer space, some companies have recognized the selling opportunity and are reworking their ads to include people with disabilities. Props to Milk-Bone for including a wheelchair user in a recent T.V. commercial, and for supporting service dogs for the disabled. Kudos, too, to Babies “R” Us, who is working with Autism Speaks on a collection of photographs titled “Faces of Autism” that are appearing on signs in stores and on a section of the Toys “R” Us Website.

For many years, ads and catalogs for Toys “R” Us have included children who are physically disabled. Consumers with physical disabilities, younger and older, have appeared in campaigns for advertisers like Cingular Wireless, Levi Strauss, Pepsi, McDonald’s and Target.

Some artists are taking matters into their own hands. In May, photographer Holly Norris shot a spoof of the hip-and-skinny, teenaged American Apparel print ads with her friend Jes Sachse. Calling it American Able, the ads featured Jes, who has a rare genetic disorder called Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, in a series of poses that have been called “a searing satire of fashion photography.”

Last year, American Airlines ran a campaign that honored the best local TV commercial featuring positive portrayals of the disabled. The winning spot — the Texas Lion’s Club — won free air time during the airline’s in-flight entertainment programming. After the dismissal of a disabled passenger by US Air this week, more airlines might want to look into this niche.

There are nearly 1 billion people globally with disabilities. Like or not, the message is getting clearer: Leave out the disabled and you’ll leave money, and customers, on the table.

This article first appeared on abledbody.com

Even in the upper echelons of employment, disability issues continue to muddle the workplace. In England, a British foreign diplomat who is deaf recently had her promotion revoked after officials ruled that her deafness would make it too expensive to send her abroad.

Jane Cordell, who was to be Britain’s new deputy ambassador to Kazakhstan, is now suing the government for discrimination, saying that it’s the only way she can get clarity on her career. “We need answers to the question, ‘Can [people with disabilities] expect to have normal diplomatic careers, or not?’” she tells The Independent.

These days, more clarity on accommodations would be good, too. The Americans with Disabilities Act say an employer has discretion to choose among effective ‘reasonable accommodations’. Similarly, the U.K.’s Disabilities Discrimination Act requires employers to make so-called ‘reasonable adjustments,’ but the term is not defined in existing legislation.

Over and over, employers fail to see how hiring and accommodating an employee with a disability is good business. Perhaps nobody has taken the time to spell it out for the British Foreign Office, but accommodating Cordell will yield far more significant returns on investment that outweigh the costs.

Cordell is a Cambridge-educated diplomat who worked for four years as first secretary at the embassy in Warsaw. Her supervisor says Cordell did a “superb diplomatic job” in Warsaw. Fluent in Polish, she used Polish-to-English interpreters in her job as well as a rotating team of “lip speakers” who relayed information to her in real-time.

Here’s what’s interesting. While in Warsaw, Cordell also championed disability rights, though it wasn’t part of her job. She organized three disability conferences with the government, worked with Polish parliament to draft new disability legislation and helped with a bill to recognize Polish sign language.

Arguably, Cordell could do the same in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic that is still rebuilding after years under Soviet rule that crushed its political and educational system and economy. Today Kazakhstan has a 99.5% adult literacy rate and its capital is home to many colleges and universities. Many Kazakhs go onto Ivy League schools and prestigious colleges in England like Oxford.

Cordell can work to improve disability discrimination laws in Kazakhstan as well as increase work opportunities for young and educated Kazakhs with disabilities. Her efforts will contribute positively to the country’s economic well-being and also position it as a leader in international disability affairs.

Her ingenuity in Kazakhstan would also reverberate to England, where up and coming students with disabilities who are interested in interested in foreign policy and public work would want to emulate her success. This is a necessary action: A more diverse population in the workplace better reflects the global population and marketplace. Globally, 1.2 billion people report having a disability. In the U.S. alone, people with disabilities have more than $1 trillion in spending power.

Cordell’s hire also is likely to bring ongoing process and cost efficiencies. The Foreign Office claims it would cost nearly £300,000 per year ($468,400) to pay for the salaries, cost of living and travel for a team of security-cleared lip speakers shuttling between Kazakhstan and Britain — a cost deemed to exceed the definition of ‘reasonable.’

But Cordell believes the Foreign Office is overestimating the costs. In Warsaw, her lip speakers cost the government around £176,000 ($274,800) per year, which she thinks is achievable in her new role. People with disabilities are generally very conscientious about the burden of accommodations on their employer and look for ways to trim costs. By working with Cordell, the government will keep the price down and learn better processes for installing support teams for deaf and other disabled workers in foreign posts.

And don’t forget, too, that the British government would be employing four people that might otherwise not have had an opportunity to gain experience abroad working as lip speakers for diplomats. Upon the end of her assignment in Kazakhstan, these four people are fully trained and cleared to serve other deaf diplomats and foreign workers, which further reduces costs.

The fate of diplomacy jobs for deaf workers in England is in Cordell’s hands. If she does win her case, let’s hope she goes to Kazakhstan with a renewed sense of purpose to trailblaze opportunities for people with disabilities around the world.

This article first appeared on abledbody.com

When I first saw the Milk-Bone TV ad portraying a college student in a wheelchair, I admit I was stunned. It took me only a few seconds to realize the connection: The student had a service dog and flipped the dog a few treats after a long day at class.

On Wednesday, the pet-snack maker hopes to do even more to highlight the work of service dogs for people with disabilities by sponsoring a primetime PBS documentary with a voiceover by actor Neil Patrick Harris, that will have viewers seeing dogs in a whole new light.

Through a Dog’s Eyes will air at 8 p.m. Eastern on WLIW21, Thirteen/WNET New York and Connecticut Public Television. The program follows the life-changing journey of four people with disabilities and their families as they go through the heartwarming and sometimes difficult process of receiving and being matched with a service dog. Jennifer Arnold, founder of Canine Assistants, one of the nation’s largest service dog organizations, shows her unique teaching methods and gives viewers an intimate look at the canine-recipient matching process.

Milk-Bone is perfectly suited for this film: For the last 12 years, it has donated a portion of sales of its dog snacks to Canine Assistants, which has placed more than 1,000 people with disabilities with service dogs in the last 20 years — at no cost to the recipients. The company also has stepped up marketing efforts to people with disabilities with the “It’s Good to Give” campaign, which launched in September.  Milk-Bone, owned by Del Monte Foods, spent nearly $8 billion on advertising in 2009, up from $600,000 in the previous year– partly to pay for TV advertising for the campaign, according to Brand Week.

As Through a Dog’s Eyes shows, it’s not all smooth sailing for the recipients of service dogs, who must spend two weeks at Canine Assistants’ training camp in Atlanta learning how to work with their new companions. One recipient, Bryson Casey, 30, is an Iraq war veteran and new quadriplegic who needs his dog, Wagner, to help him navigate the simple tasks of daily life he can no longer do on his own.

There’s also six-year-old Aiden, who was born with cerebral palsy and spends most of his time in a wheelchair. He wants his dog, Nala, to learn to help him pick up pencils at school and offer silent support in social situations.

The “It’s Good to Give” campaign includes a Facebook page where fans can follow the life of Noble, a puppy who was bred, and now being trained for, a life as a service dog.  Noble, like other service dogs, is a Golden retriever who will train for six months to two years in an intensive program run by Canine Assistants volunteers. The organization relies heavily on Milk-Bone donations to pay for animals’ training, boarding and lifetime medical care, which cost upwards of $20,000 per dog.

As a century-old company that made its first biscuit at a bakery on the Lower East Side of New York City, Milk-Bone has clearly put its money where its heart is – on dogs, and the extraordinary things they do for people.

Read more of Suzanne’s work at abledbody.com