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.

Situation: Islam Alijaj ran for the Swiss national council as the longest of longshot-candidates: He was born with cerebral palsy; he is in a wheelchair and has a speech impediment. People can barely understand him when they hear him speak. 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.

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.”

Because of his speech impediment, Islam is very limited when it comes to one of the most important skills of politicians: public speaking. And this strongly affects the perception of his intellectual capacity and competence. Let’s face it: Many people can hardly imagine that a person like Islam can represent them effectively in parliament.

When developing the strategy for Islam, we initially took the usual route: Starting with his handicaps, we looked for ways in which Islam can overcome these barriers in the election campaign. For example, Islam was supported by a voice assistant for his campaign appearances, who repeated his words for the audience. With this and other measures, Islam was able to run a reasonably competitive campaign despite his disadvantages.

However, during a discussion with Islam about the use of AI in election campaigns, the idea arose to try it the other way around: Instead of focussing on Islams barriers, we wanted to tackle the barriers in the minds of voters, who can hardly imagine someone like Islam being their representative in parliament.

We created an AI-generated text to speech avatar of Islam based on HeyGen that minimized his speech impediment in campaign videos. The voice was intentionally designed to still resemble his and videos were always introduced by the “real” Islam. The avatar was launched on social media and presented Islams election platform in a video series.

The avatar created a completely new touchpoint between Islam and the population enabling him to show his intelligence and ideas. It was presented by Switzerland’s biggest boulevard newspaper (Blick) and became his most successful social post 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.

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.