Ruderman White Paper on Employment of Actors With Disabilities in Television

RUDERMAN WHITE PAPER SHOWS 95% OF CHARACTERS WITH DISABILITIES ARE PLAYED BY ABLE-BODIED ACTORS

Did you know that the average American spends more time watching TV than hanging out with friends? But did you also know that’s not such a horrible thing? Television after all is credited with expanding greater social acceptance of minority groups, such as the LGBTQ community for example. In other words, all that screen time is having a positive impact on human beings in the real world and is nudging us toward becoming a more inclusive and welcoming society.

But before you go off and celebrate by marathoning your favorite show, consider that this wonderful social effect only comes about if minority characters are actually present in the shows. So for the second round of “did you know”s:

Did you know that people with disabilities make up 20% of our population, but fewer than 1% of TV characters? Did you know that we just conducted a study with famed actor Danny Woodburn, and found that only 5% of those characters with disabilities are played by actual actors with disabilities? Imagine if only 5% of female characters were played by women. Imagine if the next football game you watched had only one football player on the field out of the 22 positions and that the remaining people were acting as football players. That would not only be the least authentic football game ever, but we as a society wouldn’t stand for it.

The fact is that one out of five of you reading this have a disability and that five out of five know someone who has one. The report explores the implications of this reality in much more detail in the latest Ruderman White Paper on the Employment of Actors with Disabilities in Television. 

For the Executive Summary, Content Analysis, and Conclusion: 

http://www.rudermanfoundation.org/blog/article/the-ruderman-white-paper-employment-of-actors-with-disabilities-in-television

READ THE RUDERMAN WHITE PAPER

• PDF version available for download HERE
• Text Only version available for download HERE

source: Ruderman Family Foundation