Just like written content, images also convey messages, for example photos, videos or illustrations. How images are designed has an influence on how groups of people are perceived and assessed. Images also create opportunities for identification. Images should therefore be selected carefully and with sensitivity to diversity. Attention should be paid to what the images say, who they depict and how people are depicted.
Tips and recommendations
The following tips can help you when creating or selecting images:
- Representation: Pay attention to who is depicted and whether, for example, underrepresented groups are (also) depicted. This does not mean that all groups must be equally represented in every picture. Please also make sure that, for example, people with disabilities are not only depicted when the topic is disability.
- Diversity: Make sure that the diversity of the people depicted is recognisable and the same groups are not always depicted.
- (Gender) stereotypes: The reproduction of gender-related role clichés in images should be avoided, e.g. if the man is depicted as dictating (standing, superior) and the woman as noting (sitting, subordinate). This applies to other diversity characteristics such as the depiction of older people as frail.
- Image composition: Which power relations and positions are represented by the arrangement of the people in the image, which person is in the foreground and is active, which person is in the background and is passive?
