This year on La Croisette, every panel, keynote and beach conversation will come back to the same question: Can AI be truly creative? Brand leaders will argue that human emotion is irreplaceable. Creatives will insist the best ideas come from lived experience, instinct and the kind of cultural attunement no algorithm can fake.While the industry debates the future of human creativity, it’s also actively suppressing a population that brings an entirely separate human perspective to the table: people with visible and invisible disabilities. Those with disabilities — including physical impairments, chronic pain and neurodivergent conditions including ADHD and autism — often spend their lives navigating systems, experiences and products that weren’t designed with their needs in mind.This means they know how to adapt, improvise and solve problems creatively — all much-needed skills in an industry that is craving originality. Leading up to Cannes Lions 2026, Understood.org, the Unstereotype Alliance and the Shift 20 Initiative have come together to take a hard look at disability inclusion and share new findings that prove value in hard numbers. Released this week, the findings aren’t a nudge, they’re a wake-up call.People with disabilities make up nearly 16% of the world’s population and represent over $18 trillion in collective spending power. Yet in 2025, only 3% of ads featured anyone living with a disability — a figure that’s barely moved since tracking began in 2019. This gap is even more pronounced when viewed through a gender and intersectional lens. Globally, one in five women live with a disability, compounding exclusion in both representation and opportunity.Invisible disabilitiesAn estimated 1.5 billion people globally are neurodivergent, and this population is heavily represented in the creative workforce: nearly one in two people working in the U.S. creative industry identify as neurodivergent. Neurodivergent people and others who process the world differently aren’t here despite how their brains work. They’re here because of it. Many are attuned to recognizing patterns, hyperfocusing, thinking laterally and connecting dots that others miss. Yet, 90% of neurodivergent employees in creative fields are masking — or performing neurotypicality — at work. That can mean hiding the things that make them good at their jobs just to survive meetings and make it to Friday. One in three neurodivergent employees in the creative industries is dissatisfied at work, and three-quarters feel held back creatively.Ignoring disabled talent is a miss on revenueFor those who still need the business case, it’s already there. Inclusive campaigns garner 6% more long-term sales and 62% higher first-choice likelihood rates; and disabled creators generate 21% more media value and 20% more interactions than non-disabled creators.In terms of brand loyalty, 90% of adults with ADHD stay loyal to a brand they like, specifically to avoid the cognitive load of switching brands. However, only 20% of those adults feel that any brand actually understands them.Authentic representation of disabilities boosts brand reputation worldwide. In Australia, 63% of consumers with and without disabilities feel more positive about brands that include disabled people in their campaigns. There’s no strategic reason to keep ignoring this. Disability inclusion isn’t just an ethical conversation — it’s one of the industry’s clearest creativity and business unlocks today, and the industry is behind.The best ideas don’t come from rooms full of people thinking identically. They come from friction. From the person who asks the question nobody else thought to ask. From the mind that can’t stop itself from seeing the problem with a different lens.The industry keeps saying that’s what AI can’t replicate. It’s right. So why does it keep building systems that push those minds out?Key changes for marketers and agencies to makeThose attending Cannes this week set the creative agenda for the year. What gets championed at the festival gets resourced, briefed and produced everywhere else. Here are five things brand marketers and agency leaders need to change today:• Hire disabled talent as creative partners, not just as a target audience to consult at the end of a brief. When accessibility and authentic representation is built into work from the start, it’s better for everyone.• Build working environments that don’t require people to mask just to be taken seriously or get through the day. Rigidity is a creativity killer.• Put people with disabilities in campaigns because it’s accurate — the same way you’d never sign off on a brief that erased 16% of the population from view. People relate to things that mirror their experience.• Measure disability representation with the same rigor you apply to reach and conversion, because the data shows they’re connected.• Stop thinking about disability inclusion as a moral decision when it’s really a business imperative. Brands that do this unlock stronger storytelling, deeper consumer loyalty and measurable commercial returns. The research exists. The case is made. Now it needs to be the standard.We hand out Lions for creative courage, but behind those campaigns are people who can’t afford to be themselves in the buildings where the work was made. That’s a creativity crisis.Nathan Friedman is co-president and CMO of Understood.org, a nonprofit focused on neurodivergent people. Elspeth I’Anson is interim head of Unstereotype Alliance, convened by UN Women.