How cool is this?!

Over in the UK, Aardman Animations, the animation geniuses behind the Wallace and Gromit franchise, have created a new set of characters for a disability awareness campaign. The campaign, launched by the Leonard Cheshire Disability charity, is called “Creature Discomforts” and features six animal characters, each of which is voiced by a disabled person.

Characters include Flash the sausage dog, Spud the slug, Brian the bull terrier and Peg the hedgehog – all wheelchair-bound with different disabilities – Slim the stick insect with a walking stick and Tim the tortoise on crutches.

“We want people to change the way they see disability, to think and act differently and to make a positive difference to the lives of disabled people,” said Bryan Dutton, the Leonard Cheshire director general. “Disabled people experience unnecessary social barriers which are created largely through ignorance.”

Leonard Cheshire’s campaign aims to highlight the disadvantage and discrimination that disabled people experience on a daily basis. Each of the ads ends with the tag-line “Change the way you see disability”.

I’ve uploaded an album full of the pictures used in the ads over in the gallery, click here to check them out now, or click here to watch a 5 second teaser clip of one of the TV ads that has been made available to preview online today, and they’ll be available in their entirety later this week at creaturediscomforts.org.

What do you think of the campaign? Novel and fun or suffering from “we’ve heard it all before” syndrome? Let me know your thoughts below :