In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the historic Americans with Disabilities Act, RespectAbility’s Lauren Appelbaum sat down with disabled journalists and nondisabled allies who have used their platform to shine the spotlight on stories important to the disability community to discuss the importance of disability representation and coverage in the media.

As it stands, disability inclusion does not get much attention in the media.

“People with disabilities are considered the invisible minority,” said Tim Gray, a senior VP at Variety. “I don’t think journalists are putting up a wall. I think it just doesn’t occur to them. Even now, with all the talk about diversity and inclusion, 90% of that conversation is about racial inclusion. Maybe the other 10% is about gender with women equality.” [continue reading…]

With one-in-five people having a disability in the U.S. today, the lack of representation – just 3.1 percent on-screen and even less in children’s television (less than one percent) – means that millions of people are unable to see themselves in media today. The national disability advocacy nonprofit RespectAbility has been honored to play a part in changing this, including consulting on an array of films and TV shows for a variety of studios and networks. As part of a week-long celebration of the 30^th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, RespectAbility highlighted examples of best practice in authentic casting and disability representation in Hollywood.

Moderated by actress and model Tatiana Lee, who also serves as RespectAbility’s Hollywood Inclusion Associate, one panel shined the spotlight on young adult entertainment media focusing on Ramy (Hulu) and Everything’s Gonna Be Okay (Freeform).

Shows like these demonstrate Hollywood’s changing tide and push for inclusion of creatives with disabilities, both in front of and behind the camera. As research shows, only 3.1 percent of all speaking or named characters in film were shown to have a disability in 2020. Trends show these numbers will increase, and these talented individuals are at the forefront of this industrial shift. [continue reading…]

On the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, RespectAbility board member and co-founder of Bunim-Murray Productions, Jonathan Murray, hosted a panel of entertainment industry writers, producers, and executives to speak about the experience of the disabled community within the industry. Part one of the four-part “Fighting Stigmas with Hollywood” series, “Respecting the Ability: Ensuring Authentic Representation in the Entertainment Industry,” is about the importance of not only allowing but creating more supportive environments for people in the industry to tell the authentic and diverse stories representing all.

The lack of representation of the disability community in entertainment is vast. While one in five people in the U.S. has a disability, just 3.1 percent of characters on a primetime show have a disability – meaning that millions of people are unable to see themselves represented in media today. The shortage is one reason why RespectAbility is fighting for change; however, a change like this must be embraced from the top and have buy-in at every level. Studio heads, showrunners, producers, and writers must do their part to inflict change on the industry and showcase diverse people and stories. The participants shared why change is happening within the industry, and each has proven to be changemakers in their own right. [continue reading…]

“When you see an object, it seems that you see it as an entire thing first, and only afterwards do its details follow on. But for people with autism, the details jump straight out at us first of all, and then only gradually, detail by detail, does the whole image float up into focus.”

― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

Los Angeles, CA, Jan. 5 – How do you see the world? Do you enjoy the beautiful small details of a flower or the sweet melodious sound of birds chirping? Do you find the sound of rain calming? What if all those details that we love started to slam into our minds in disruptive and disturbing ways? Would you still love them? For the neurotypical, our brains are designed to block out specific details of our environment for various reasons. But what if we couldn’t? Even still, what if you did always love them but couldn’t verbally express your appreciation? How emotionally taxing would your world be if everything you sensed was amplified and you had no way to express yourself verbally?

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It was June of 1969. I was an 11 ½ year old visually impaired girl leaving home for the first time to attend Jewish overnight camp. I boarded the train to Wisconsin consumed with mixed emotions: already a little homesick and anxious, but also excited. I was excited about the friends coming from my Jewish Day school, and the new friends I hope to meet. At that moment, I was just like them—leaving home to spend three fun-filled weeks at summer camp.

It was a disaster. [continue reading…]

Atlanta, GA – The Georgia Disability Vote Partnership (GDVP) is proud to release its nonpartisan voter guide. Most of the partners of GDVP are nonprofit organizations and this voter guide is for educational purposes only, as GDVP does not rate or endorse candidates. The purpose of the guide is to help voters know the positions of the candidates and to provide some resources to help Georgians vote. GDVP has asked each of the Democratic and Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate the identical questions about issues affecting people with disabilities. Not all of the candidates have responded in full, but all responses that the partnership has received are reported here in full without editing.

According to the 2019 Annual Disability Statistics Compendium, the total number of Georgians with disabilities is 1,246,077. 2018 employment data shows that there are 658,811 working-age people with disabilities in Georgia. In the economic expansion prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 238,875 (or 36.3 percent) of those Georgians have a job. [continue reading…]

As the nation waits for the Georgia Senate runoff next week, disability organization calls on pollsters and media to track disability participation and access.

Washington, D.C., Dec. 28 – With the political universe centered on the Senate runoff in Georgia, the unique needs and barriers of Georgians with disabilities could very well factor into to the outcome of the race. Thus, the national nonpartisan disability inclusion organization RespectAbility is asking pollsters, polling firms and political consultants to track voters with disabilities in their demographic data, as well as voter access exit polling.

According to the 2019 Annual Disability Statistics Compendium, the total number of Georgians with disabilities is 1,246,077, making up 12.1 percent of the total state population. 2018 employment data show that there are 658,811 working-age people with disabilities in Georgia. In the economic expansion prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, only 238,875 (or 36.3 percent) of those Georgians had a job.

Thus far, there has been little outreach to voters with disabilities from all four Senate candidates in the runoff race. As noted by RespectAbility in November, none of the four candidates even mention the word disability on their campaign websites. None of the Senate candidates’ websites are fully accessible to the 254,972 Georgians who are blind or low vision. And very few of the candidates’ videos have captions, making them inaccessible to the 328,000 deaf and hard of hearing Georgians. [continue reading…]

Hilla Hadas

My name is Doctor Hilla Hadas, and I am the CEO of Enosh – The Israeli Mental Health Association. As organizations throughout the world are figuring out how to accomplish their missions in this time of COVID-19, I am pleased to talk about how we did this at Enosh, and how we worked to serve the changing mental health needs of our service users.

Enosh promotes the recovery, social inclusion, and rights of people with psychosocial disabilities and their families in Israel. Enosh is the largest mental health organization in Israel with 70 service centers that deliver comprehensive and groundbreaking community based mental health programs in the domains of housing, employment, social recreation, and family counseling. Enosh programs are based on the Recovery Model principles, which upholds functional disability; i.e., patients can lead a meaningful life in the community, despite persistent symptoms, and discover new abilities and interests. We also work to reduce the self-inflicted stigma and the societal stigma towards people with mental illness and their family members. [continue reading…]

Alexander Howard

Los Angeles, Dec. 24 – As a massive fan of cinema, I enjoy all kinds of films: tearjerkers, horror, action, comedies, big blockbusters and independent films. I also enjoy foreign-language films when I can watch them, that is. You see, I am visually impaired. I occasionally need “audio description” or an “English dubbed track” when I watch movies, especially foreign language ones. I am not able to read the subtitles fast enough to enjoy them or even understand them fully. For those who don’t know, audio description is an audio track available on some streaming services, blu-rays and in theaters. It is a human voice that describes the action on screen (and also reads subtitles). Dubbing is another tool where voices are cut over the original actor’s voices in foreign films and says the lines in English or whichever languages you choose. Both of these tools help me – and others with low vision – to enjoy movies, especially foreign language ones. However, the majority of foreign language films do not incorporate an audio description or dub tracks.

Roma was nominated in 2019 for Best Picture. It was directed by one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, Alfonso Cuaron. I love his movies and his style. Children of Men is one of my favorite films. Roma is in Spanish, but it’s a Netflix original. So, I was hoping it would have an audio description track because Netflix is great at making their content as accessible as possible. I planned a night to watch it and was so excited. Then I turned it on and was disappointed to find it only had a Spanish audio description. It has been two years, and I still am not able to watch Roma. [continue reading…]