ABSTRACT
Works on advertising seldom deal with disability;2 works on disability rarely speak of advertising.3 When such intersections occur, scholars routinely point out the obvious: because there is so little advertising that includes persons with disabilities, it follows empirically that there is scarcely anything to write about (Nelson, 1996; Hahn, 1997).Thus, although there are many well-argued and thoroughly documented studies of stereotypic images of race, gender, nationality, indigenous peoples, and colonized populations in advertising (Barthel, 1988; Pieterse, 1992; Kern-Foxworth, 1994; O’Barr, 1994; Pinkus, 1995; Goldman and Papson, 1996; Kilbourne, 1999), there is no comparable study of stereotypic images of disability in advertising. Conversely, there are several magisterial studies of television, photographic, and cinematic images of disability (Klobas, 1988; Schuchman, 1988; Hevey, 1992; Norden, 1994; Pointon et al., 1997), but none of these deal specifically with advertising. This gap in scholarship appears unbridged.
