Islam was convinced that people with disabilities could no longer wait for change but had to take the fight for more self-determination into their own hands. And he knew that real change could only be achieved in the national parliament.

However, Islam was the longest of longshot-candidates: He was born with cerebral palsy; he sits in a wheelchair and has a speech impediment. People can barely understand him when hearing him speak for the first time.

Moreover, Islam had a hopeless starting position on the party-list. To be elected anyway, tens of thousands of voters had to write his name twice on their ballot paper. All while competing with over 700 candidates from the major parties for 36 seats allotted to his constituency (Zurich) for the Swiss national council.

Because of his speech impediment, Islam is very limited when it comes to one of the most important skills of politicians: public speaking. We turned this into a strength and made him the voice for people with disabilities who were tired of not being heard.

Insight: Islam is smart, but his speech impediment strongly affects the perception of his intellectual capacity and competence.

Key-message: Islam himself has no voice, but that is precisely why he is the right person to give people with disabilities a voice in parliament.

Audience: The Swiss population, especially voters in Zurich

Creation and distribution: We created an AI-generated text to speech avatar of Islam based on HeyGen. The voice was intentionally designed to still resemble Islam’s while minimizing his speech impediment. The avatar was launched on social media in September 2023 and presented Islams election platform over the course of four Weeks. It created a completely new interface between Islam and the population enabling him to show his intelligence and ideas. Furthermore, we enabled other people with disabilities how they could give a voice to Islam and spread the word, that they finally deserve a champion in the national parliament.

We created an AI-generated text to speech avatar of Islam based on HeyGen. The voice was intentionally designed to still resemble Islam’s while minimizing his speech impediment. The avatar was launched on social media in September 2023 and presented Islams election platform over the course of four Weeks. It created a completely new interface between Islam and the population enabling him to show his intelligence and ideas.

We recruited volunteers from the disabled community and trained them on how to become politically active. Between Mai 2023 and September 2023 we conducted 10 Workshops on how to support Islams campaign online and offline. Hundreds of people from the disabled community distributed over 200,000 Flyers, organized 50 inclusive campaign events and supported Islam on social media generating an organic reach of over 5 million (half the population of Switzerland).

Islams campaign generated a PR-Value of over 2 million making the rights of people with disability a national topic. Islams Avatar was shared by Switzerland’s biggest boulevard newspaper (Blick) and became of the most successful Posts of the entire election.

But most importantly: Islam was elected. He won over 95,000 votes, overtaking four rivals on the party-list and beating over 700 other candidates. Islam dominated the headlines for Weeks.

It is an ironic but wonderful twist of fate that Islam, a person who can barely speak himself, has grown into the voice and hope for people with disabilities in Switzerland.