Ad Council "Crutches" PSA

The Ad Council has a campaign called "Don't Almost Give" and a series of public service announcements that includes one called "Crutches." Here it is with the other five ads at their website -- it's the second one. And here it is at YouTube:



Description: The 30-second ad shows a outdoor cement staircase and a man on wooden crutches slowly climbing the stairs one step at a time. He climbs about 6 steps during the brief ad. The male voiceover: "This is a man who almost learned to walk ... At a rehab center that
almost got built ... By people who almost gave money ... Almost gave ... How good is almost giving? About as good as almost walking."

I heard about this ad on a disability listserv, but eeka at One Smoot Short of a Bridge has already written on the condescending attitude. She sums it up very well:

Sure, the guy deserved to have better care, and presumably could have recovered more fully. But the inaccurate and pitying language needs to go. What's he doing right there in the film clip? He's walking. He's getting places. He's living his life. Even if the reason for his disability was something preventable that we should be fighting to change, the way to accomplish this isn't by describing the way he gets around as "almost walking." I suppose it might be different if he were a real individual who personally describes his disability in this way, but since he's an archetype, it comes across as describing people with disabilities as "almost" doing things. This kind of view can be dangerous, because when we're all sitting around a table, if we're stuck on the idea that one of the people "almost" walked to the meeting, we're going to unconciously feel that he has less to offer than people who fully got to the meeting, even though we're all there in the end.