Abstract
I’m one of 650 million people that suffer from a disability. At the time of my diagnosis, I was a communication design student, which led me to question the seemingly simple design of the International Symbol of Access and how it fails to represent invisible disabilities. As my investigation deepened, I encountered the full range of disabilities represented in YouTube™ advertisements that promote well-established brands and utilise disability as a rhetorical device to gain empathy from viewers in order to promote commercial products and services. The purpose of my paper is a comparison of three YouTube™ advertisements created for Microsoft™ Xbox™, Consol™, and Toyota™, respectively. All three advertisements were created by reputable design agencies, and despite promoting three very different products and brand identities, all feature the disabled. In this study, I demonstrate how these advertisements make use of the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos, pathos and kairos to strengthen the bonds between the viewer and the brand in digital advertising. The language of media is a rhetorical language, and when combined with Disability Studies, is useful to develop a better understanding of how visual arguments can impact perceptions of the disabled. I focus on the appeals, symbols, stigmas, and social meanings associated with disabilities and how they can lead to negative stereotyping. My findings reveal that the selected sample displays a spectrum of narratives, representing disability in three different ways, namely disability as tokenism, disability as representation and disability as endorsement.
M.A. (Design)