Are you giving up on some of your audience?

If I told you that you could generate up to 20% more money with your business, would I get your attention? Well you’re in luck because in a way, this is exactly what I’m saying. Bold claim, I know. But hear me out. Don’t just take my word for it. I have the data to back it up.

Did you know that according to the World Economic Forum, over 1.3 billion people in the world live with at least one disability that affects their daily lives? Sounds like an awful lot of people? Well, that’s because it is! To put this number into perspective, 1.3 billion people is about as many people as those living in the People’s Republic of China around 2005. People with disabilities represent at least 17% of the global population, and form the largest minority group worldwide. With 80% of disabilities being acquired later in life, and a global population that is definitely not getting any younger, it’s clear that disabilities will be on the rise for years to come.

But worldwide data might be a bit much. Let’s scale it back to Canada and the United States, just for fun.

According to findings from the 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability, an estimated 20% of working-age Canadians self-identify as having one or more disabilities that affect how they perceive, understand, and interact with the world around them. That’s more than one out of every five people in the “Great White North”. For the majority of these Canadians, the resulting obstacles faced in their day-to-day lives limit their full participation in different aspects of society.

Understanding the challenges faced by these people in personal, professional, and economic situations can help us, as professional communicators, become more mindful and empathetic about what the barriers mean. It can help us mitigate unexpected challenges. It can help us extend the reach of who we successfully connect with.

But what about the United States, you ask? Well, their numbers are even higher! A 2016 research from the CDC (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), shows that 26% of the U.S. population, or over 61 million Americans, also self-report as having one or more disabilities. That’s more than one out of every four persons living in the U.S. And with two out of every five American seniors living with a disability, that number aligns quite nicely with Canadian data, claiming that 38% of Canadian seniors are in a similar boat.

These numbers seem hard to believe, I know. Surely, you don’t run into someone with a disability for every four-five people that you meet daily.

Or do you?

There’s always more to it than meets the eye

As it turns out, according to InvisibleDisabilities.org, an American non-profit association dedicated to raising awareness about how invisible illnesses, pains, and disabilities are indeed, very real, states that about 74% of disabilities are, in fact, unnoticeable to the naked eye. This alone explains why the majority of us don’t realize how prevalent disabilities truly are in society.

Invisible disabilities include all of the situations where the use of a wheelchair, or anything else that might visually signal the impairment to the outside world is missing. Lived conditions that you would never know about, unless these people actually revealed them. Conditions such as certain visual or auditory issues, colourblindness, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, anxiety, as well as other mental, cognitive or physical challenges impacting a person’s daily life and activities.

And guess what? Disclosing a disability is oftentimes one of the last things someone tends to want to reveal about themselves. Not because they’re shameful, but because of privacy concerns, fear of reprisal, backlash, or the risk of being viewed differently.

If you are not accounting for these invisible disabilities to affect the experience of some of your audience members, then your brand might, in fact, be giving up on up to 20 to 25% of your audience without even realizing the prejudices you are causing these people.

People who have disabilities, whether those are visible or not, are the same people that come to our talks, read our blogs, buy our books, watch our videos, feed on our ideas, grow from our thought leadership. They’re the same people likely to hire us for our next engagement or play a crucial role in determining whether we get referenced for the next contract or the next gig. As long as we don’t shut them out, that is.

Unknowingly rub some of them the wrong way just because you’re clueless about their needs and expectations, and who knows how much money, or how many business opportunities you end up leaving behind that year.