About 15-20% of the population worldwide is considered to be neurodivergent. Yet visual imagery continues to dismiss, ignore and misrepresent people with disabilities. To help increase authentic representation of autistic people, Hiki, the world’s largest friendship and dating app for the Autistic community, has teamed up with Getty Images to help create a new custom content initiative, #AutisticOutLoud.

The initiative sees content creators and photographers who identify as autistic create imagery and videos that showcase the authentic lived experience of the autistic community through their own lens. #AutisticOutLoud features a curated gallery of images and videos that show the diversity and resilience of the community with creators that will also become part of Getty Images’ global contributor network.

The work builds on the existing work Getty Images has undertaken to accurately represent the disability community at large, with content created as part of this initiative running live on Getty Images’ Disability Collection. #AutisticOutLoud is part of the brand’s ongoing mission to improve representation within imagery.

Dr. Rebecca Swift, Global Head of Creative Insights at Getty Images explains:  “We have been working on rethinking how to visualise disability in all its diversity since 2018.”

She continues: “Having gone through the process for the past 5 years, invisible disability comes up a lot. When Mindshare and Hiki came to us with the idea of wanting to re-picture autism it was exactly the right time. Working with them in terms of them being very much part of the community, helped us to think about how we might do this. It gave us the confidence and the guidance about how to do this correctly.”

You can’t be what you can’t see

The #AustisticOutLoud initiative strives to increase authentic representation of autistic people through the lens of the community. While autism and neurodiversity more broadly is invisible, the campaign aims to bring the experience to life through visual imagery.

“We work with people from neurodiverse communities and understand the importance of having that diversity within our teams but how do we make that visible?” asks Swift. She continues: “For Hiki and Mindshare, it was about how do we move away from the stereotypes of autism in general. It tends to be very visualised as young boys, young white boys and young white boys who are socially distant or disconnected to the world.”

She continues: “Actually, there are women with autism, there are non-binary people with autism, there are people who have autism along with other disabilities. The diversity within disability is immense and so we worked together to think: how we can introduce some joy, vibrancy and colour and show a range of emotions through imagery?”

Looking to lived experiences

Moving away from stereotypes and working with creators with lived experience the team was able to create meaningful imagery to bring the autistic experience into visual language.

“We wanted to ensure that we were true to the creator's lived experience so all of the content created was self-portraiture. They were both the photographer and the subject,” Swift explained. “We purposely identified influencers on social media. They were already activists in this space, very much talking about what it's like to be someone who has autism and so we already knew the style of photography they were creating,” she adds.

To create the images the team asked the creators to ‘capture their true selves’, how they ‘go about their daily lives’, ‘what stim toys they might use’ and finally to ‘capture themselves with a person or pet they felt deeply connected to.’

“We had a huge range of content but the portraiture was the most revealing about how they wanted to be seen in the world. Very different to how autism is represented currently,” added Swift.

The importance of representation

In a world where audiences are overwhelmed with content, Swift poses the question: “Where do you go from there? Do we create more or better?”

In Getty Images' research for its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Toolkit, the biggest gap between population and visual representation was disability. The research points to the fact that 20-25% of the world's population has some kind of disability but this is represented in just 1% of visual imagery, underlining the importance of Swift’s ambitions to create better.

The #AutisticOutLoud initiative was pioneered by Hiki and Mindshare because Hiki was looking for content which was going to encourage the community to connect through their app. In the first instance, the #AutisticOutLoud imagery will be used by Hiki to promote usage of the app. However, with the content readily available on Getty Images the opportunity is there for brands and advertisers to use the visual imagery in campaigns beyond those that focus purely on an audience of people with autism.

“Working in media and as someone who is autistic, I was tired of seeing the regressive, disempowering images of autistic folks in mass media that are at odds with the community I know – one that is highly expansive and creative,” added Rachel Lowenstein, one of the autistic content creators featured in this campaign and a lead on this project as Global Head of Inclusive Innovation at Mindshare. She continues: “I’m proud of this project as an opportunity for our industry to reshape media to be more representative to a community that has long been spoken over and for, by centering our own expressions. That’s why we called it #AutisticOutLoud.”

Improving the representation and reflecting the lived experiences of people with disabilities in visual media is an essential step in improving the authenticity of campaigns and connecting with audiences. By striving to create better, listening to communities and widening the lens, the #AutisticOutLoud campaign is a reminder of the power of inclusion and active listening.