One notable thing we found is that the same communities remained the least represented throughout all three TV studies. That means for five years of television, since our studies primarily focus on disability representation on television, those communities were the Blind community, the D/deaf community, Little People, people with learning disabilities, and people with intellectual disabilities. And these were the least represented by a lot. We are talking so few characters you can count them on one or two hands, and they are supposed to represent entire disabled communities.
When there is representation of disability, the majority of characters are played by nondisabled actors. Even when we get disability stories, disabled actors don't get cast, in most cases. In fact, we found that throughout the five years of our studies that at most, about 10% of disabled characters were played by actors who identify as disabled. This has dipped down in recent years to as low as 8%. That's abysmal. It also means a lot of nondisabled people are portraying us when they don't understand disability themselves.
The problem is cyclical. Bad representation feeds into new bad representation. As society learns how to interact and treat disabled people from badly represented disability portrayals, they learn how to interact with us inaccurately and usually with a sense of fear. A lot of media makers are afraid of becoming disabled and disability representation to them is about showing how disabled people are "other" and something that nondisabled people should be grateful not to be.
So, then new media makers watching and learning about disability from these awful portrayals recycle these harmful and inaccurate ideas about disability to create even more bad media and bad representation. So the bad portrayals feed the harmful treatment we experience, and the harmful treatment in turn feeds the creation of more harmful representations of disability.
This is why we need to get fresh blood in Hollywood, specifically disabled media makers and creatives. Most of the media about disability is not created by disabled people and that's a major problem. If disabled people are not able to be the characters or help create the media, our voices are rendered useless and instead the voices of people that don't understand what it is like to actually be disabled are the ones telling the world what it's like to be disabled without really knowing if they are right or accurate.
Within this wish for better representation, I also wish for more stories that include disabled people and disability but are not only focused on disability. One of the more harmful aspects of most current disability representation is that disability is not just featured inaccurately. It's often the entire story. Disability is used as a plot device in many stories featuring disabled people. The disabled characters are reduced to nothing more than their disabilities. Disabled people are more than just disabled. We have full and robust lives, where disability is just one aspect and part of our existence.
This is also the way that we get people to include disabled people, not only in Hollywood, but everywhere. When disabled people are represented as whole people with full lives, that is what those watching learn about disabled people. We are not just our disabilities. Our disabilities are important and should not be ignored, especially if there's something dealing with a disability that is central to the storytelling, but they don't need to be the end-all be-all of who we are as people. Too much media already represents us that way.
There are so many stories that could be told that include disabled characters. One of the most interesting things about the disabled community is that there are so many differences between us. There are so many differences between people, even within individual disability communities. The wide range of people in the disabled community is astounding and represents the kind of differences that has the potential to change the way we as a society look at disabled people and disability in general.
There's nothing wrong with being disabled, but you would not know that from how the media portrays disability. That needs to change and that's really all I want for the holidays. That's why my creative partner and I have turned towards creating television. We are taking our knowledge based on our studies, and putting it to practical use. Perhaps my wish will come true for better representation – a wish I hope for all of us. But perhaps I'm going to be the one to help bring that change in Hollywood. Only time will tell.
Here's to a new year with the best disability representation to date. That is something I think we can all get behind!
