Islam Alijaj’s campaign for the Swiss national council gave a voice to 1.8 million people and revolutionised the public perception of people with disabilities.

22% of people in Switzerland live with disabilities. Yet these 1.8 million people are dramatically underrepresented. Hardly any people with disabilities hold influential positions in society as they are mostly accommodated and cared for in closed institutions.

The lack of representation has serious social consequences: large parts of the UN-Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have not yet been implemented in Switzerland. Hence, Islams election campaign for the Swiss National Council was also a referendum on Switzerland's failed inclusion policy. Or as he put it: “I don't want my children to grow up in a society where their own father is seen as inferior.”

Situation: Islam Alijaj ran for the Swiss national council as 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 (Zürich) for the Swiss national council.

Brief: Create an election campaign.

Objectives: Get Islam elected and make inclusion a national topic in Switzerland.

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.

Implementation of the PR and timeline: Islams integrated election campaign ran from 01. Of January on multiple channels (Billboards, Social-media, Events, Book, Podcast). The avatar was made available to the media.

Scale: Zürich.

Islam’s 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.