Why the fashion industry and Hollywood should be considering accessibility from the start.

From a dress embroidered with vaginas to throwing shade at Taylor Swift.

The 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards (2024) held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles saw some historic moves forward in diversity. Jo Koy was the Globes’ first Filipino host, and Lily Gladstone became the first indigenous Globes winner. 

Hosted in a stunning luxurious venue, dressed up in its gorgeous red-carpet suit, designed for only the most aesthetically pleasing pictures of airbrushed celebrities with seemingly enough space for millions of reporters and cameras, keeping the rest of us up to date on the elite’s shenanigans; as a disabled person, it’s bittersweet watching because once again there’s no disability inclusion in sight. 

When most people think of accessibility, their brains usually go straight to wheelchairs and how public infrastructure should be accessible to wheelchair users. Which, of course, is extremely important. Diversity to a neurotypical, able-bodied person means a range of different sizes and races; disability is not usually included. 

Accessibility is the quality of being able to be reached, entered, easily obtained, used, easily understood, or appreciated. And although not in the definition, needs to be without the person losing their dignity or respect. Accessibility isn’t exclusively talking about disabled people, but it is an important factor of every day life for disabled people; with 16% of the world’s population identifying as disabled, we really should be thinking more about this than we currently are. 

Following the goings on at the Golden Globes, theoretically, has never been easier. We can scroll endlessly through Social media and any coverage that allows us to watch from the UK. But here lies the first problem: Relying on social media relies on social media being accessible, which it is not. Alt text is ignored by many big brands and celebrities. Audio and visual content often doesn’t include subtitles or video descriptions; leaving out deaf, visually impaired, and blind users straight off the bat. Offline coverage e.g. in magazines and newspapers, is rarely provided in an accessible format, unless translated by charities or willing volunteers. Brands don’t even realise how much money they’re losing because of this. 

But it's not just the award shows people are missing out on. The fashion industry has to find somewhere to make their money. And although magazines aren’t entirely a thing of the past, most of this content ends up online. According to wearepurple.org.uk, 73% of disabled potential customers experience barriers on more than a quarter of the websites they visit. Hollywood and the fashion industry work hand-in-hand: without one being accessible. the other won’t be either. You get one on board, and the other will usually follow behind. 

So, what is an inclusive fashion industry? Inclusive fashion isn’t just about adaptive fashion, which is based on physical accessibility with extra functions to ease use like zips, Velcro, and more practical solutions for people with limited mobility etc…Inclusive fashion starts at the beginning. In an ideal world inclusive fashion should be made by teams who accurately represent the population. Having a wide range of lived experience is important in high-up roles. Having bosses who have been spoon-fed since birth isn’t going to help anyone, but making sure that a diverse group of people from different ethnic, economic, and ability backgrounds is always going to lead to filling in the gaps that the current industry hasn’t even managed to spot yet. There’s always room to weave a thread of capitalism into any situation, and this gap in the market is costing companies billions. The spending power of disabled people and their families is valued at £249 billion a year. It could change… but only when able-bodied people decide they care enough.  

So, what are the issues? There is a culture of labelling disabled people as either “lazy” or “inspirational” but never “hot” and “sexy”, or any category that could secure someone a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Many think disabled people could even be pretending to have their disabilities just to avoid working and claim disability benefits; with the number of people worried about this, you’d think it was an actual problem, but from 2022 to 2023 the DWP published their annual statistics and it showed that Personal Independence Payment (PIP) fraud was under 0.2% of PIP spending. For anyone who is coming through the PIP process, disabled people all know how impossible it feels to get it even when you genuinely qualify. This belief trickles all the way back to the fashion industry. These businesses and business owners don’t seem to know about the statistics. I think if they did, there would be a much bigger incentive to include everybody. 

Inclusion doesn’t just benefit the people we are including. It benefits the systems and the companies that are providing the inclusion, as well as providing younger generations with people to look up to, which one day might hopefully make up for the lack of representation that we’ve faced or potentially open their minds to a more accurate representation of what our world is really like. 

Sources:

Wearepurple.org.uk. (2015). The Purple Pound – Infographic. [online] Available at: https://wearepurple.org.uk/the-purple-pound-infographic/ [Accessed 8 Jan. 2024].

for, D. (2023). Fraud and error in the benefit system Financial Year Ending (FYE) 2023. [online] GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2022-to-2023-estimates/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-ending-fye-2023#:~:text=The%20Personal%20Independence%20Payment%20overpayment,%C2%A330m)%20in%20FYE%202020. [Accessed 8 Jan. 2024].

‌

‌