Over the past few years, a handful of catalogs and marketing campaigns have featured models with special needs, such as Down’s syndrome or physical disabilities. In general, the intent is not to call attention to these conditions, but simply to better represent the diversity of the marketers’ customer base.
Examples have ranged from a Target Halloween ad featuring a girl with leg braces and crutches wearing a Frozen costume to Spanish designer Dolores Cortéz and UK retailer Marks & Spencer including children with Down’s Syndrome in an advertisement and catalog, respectively. While such initiatives are becoming more frequent, they remain rare enough that they still attract media attention in most cases.
More recently, this trend has started to make its way into the licensing arena, namely with the introduction of autistic characters into children’s entertainment. In October 2015, Sesame Workshop created an autistic character named Julia, who is starring along with Elmo, Grover, and Abby Cadabby in Sesame Street content distributed via app, website, video, and other media. The content is part of an initiative to help children accept their peers with autism and provide resources to teachers, parents, and caregivers.
Earlier in the year, Kavaleer Productions of Ireland launched a series of brain-training apps created for children with autism and ADHD, produced in conjunction with a neuroscience lab called Cortechs. The IP, which spotlights a high-functioning autistic eight-year-old detective named Dougie Noir, is being developed for game apps, digital storybooks, and a TV series.
In these two cases, the message goes beyond inclusion, educating about autism in the case of the former and addressing the needs of children with autism and ADHD in the latter. But whether the objective is to provide education for special-needs children, to teach children and adults to be accepting of special-needs friends, or simply to spread a message of inclusiveness, the trend toward incorporating the special-needs community into mainstream intellectual property and marketing campaigns bears watching.
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