Actors with disabilities seek more roles.

[Jill]

Have you noticed how few actors and presenters have disabilities? In the USA Robert Hall who works regularly on CSI says "We are virtually invisible" and a presentation estimated that fewer than 2% of film and television characters are disabled even though 20% of their population has some kind of disability. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Actors' Equity Association said they will push to increase physical access to auditions and a major expansion in roles for the disabled and employment for disabled journalists. A group called Abilities United actively promotes those with disabilities while in the UK a diversity toolkit is availableHERE/ which provides all kinds of resources on employment for actors with disabilities.

Original Article:

Actors With Disabilities Seek More Roles

By MICHAEL CIEPLY; Compiled by Dave Itzkoff
Published: October 6, 2008
“We are virtually invisible,” Robert David Hall, a regular on “CSI,” said at a news conference on Monday announcing a plan to expand media-industry employment of people with disabilities. Mr. Hall, who walks on prosthetics and plays Dr. Al Robbins on “CSI,” said he played one of only three disabled characters in recurring television roles. At briefings in Los Angeles, New York and Washington leaders of the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Actors’ Equity Association said they were planning a broad push to increase physical access to auditions, a major expansion in roles for the disabled and greater employment for disabled journalists. Mr. Hall spoke as the chairman of a tri-union committee of people with disabilities. A presentation estimated that fewer than 2 percent of film and television characters are disabled, while 20 percent of the nation’s population has a disability of some kind.

[Jill]

That's a beautiful picture Tomas.

[Tomas]

the actors...the artists with disabilities - I think these people understand the best the main message of the fine arts - know the the cost of being a human.

sincerely yours
one from Modus Vivendi

[Jill]

Hi Mandy

I think it starts in childhood. At least when I was at school children with physical disabilities were all put in seperate schools so there was not much chance of seeing disability as something that can happen to anyone. Since then there is more of an attempt to integrate children of all abilities and make places more accessible but the stereotypes in models and actors having 'perfect' looks persist. People with disabilities don't fit into the required stereotypes and often don't even get cast to play roles depicting people with disabilities. These days are equivalent to when no women read the News and they gave all kinds of sexist excuses why women couldn't read the News but now we take it for granted that they do and will. Hopefully the same kind of changes will occur for actors with disabilities.

[Mandy Lawrence]

I think it is pretty lame that actors with disabilities are not given enough opportunities to be in films or tv. I think society is still quite phobic about disability. It has this false empathy. As in "We have nothing against disabled people, as long as they are somewhere else".

It's also pretty evident that those who write film scripts forget that there are disabled people in the world. A bit too Disney for my liking with alot of prejudice abounding in a Hollywood natzi way.

You can change laws....but you can't change mind-sets. And the film sets are pretty one dimensional too.