Introduction: Disability and digital marketing

Abstract

Despite having the right to full social inclusion, people with disabilities face multiple everyday trials. These challenges are further compounded through persisting narratives of stigma, prejudice and discrimination. Disabled voices tend to be carried by others, originating from more formal positions, where the medical model assumes precedence. Acknowledging the frailties and the need to break down impediments to exorcising voice needs further cultivating and holds potential to transfigure the disability scape, enabling appreciation and recognition of lives lived, in all their volubility. Consumer researchers’ immersion (physically and virtually) in wider fields of disability offers rich and interactive insights into disabled consumers’ lives, from carefully curated, shared voice-making. Silenced voices of disabled consumers are often understood as one of choices-the wanting to remain marginalized, reinforced by illness and stigma. Marketplace exclusion disrupts everyday life, and in its wake, associated challenges of non-acceptance persist. These cannot be negotiated from the basis of ostensible vulnerability, veiled in misunderstanding. While disabled consumers face many barriers to communing in the online space, Internet usage nonetheless offers potential both to participate in society more fully and to create alternatives to experiencing wider exclusion, utilizing the arts and activism as forms of empowering expression and understanding of disability culture.</p