The disabled acting community works to end of decades of 'invisibility'

As Michael J Fox embraces his Parkinson's for a comedic return to television, the disabled acting community works towards the end of decades of 'invisibility.'

Television drama is all about make-believe - but the days of making us believe that people with disabilities are invisible or don't exist may soon be winding down.

Grass-roots activism by Hollywood unions to write more disabled roles and open up the audition process, a growing awareness that real-life people with disabilities give such characters greater authenticity, plus the electrifying recent news that the beloved actor Michael J Fox is returning to the small screen despite his Parkinson's disease - have re-energised both the debate and thespian hopes.

"I am so thrilled about Fox," says RJ Mitte, 20, the disabled advocate and charismatic rising star of the award-winning AMC series Breaking Bad. Born with cerebral palsy, he typifies the drive and desire it takes to break in to show business if you're not Fox with a platinum CV. "I think he will open tremendous doors for the disabled acting community."

But for lesser lights and emerging acting talent with disabilities, there are some daunting statistics to overcome to gain a toehold in the television arena.

The United Nations estimates there are 650 million people in the world living with a disability. In the US alone, there are 56 million Americans with disabilities who remain virtually invisible in media.

To put this into perspective, the 20 per cent of Americans between the ages of 5 and 64 who live with a disability are represented by fewer than two per cent of characters on television. Even more dispiriting, only one-half of one per cent of words spoken on TV are spoken by a person with a disability.

Making a living doing so can be impossible. Screen Actors Guild (SAG) research also indicates that 56 per cent of background performers with disabilities earn less than US$1,000 (Dh3,670) each year in film and TV.

Despite existing producer/union policies of non-discrimination, more than one-third of people with disability say they encountered discrimination - not being cast for a role or being refused an audition due to their disabilities.

The problem is hardly unique to North American television. In the UK, the disabled performer Lisa Hammond (Grange Hill, Psychoville) said "put 'crips' in your scripts" in an open letter she wrote to the UK industry in August.

"The best representation is a hands-off one," she wrote. "The character with the disability does not have to have a story written around that disability. It is their human stories/problems that are the juicy and dramatic parts of their lives."

What appears to be turning the tide - or at least making transformative waves in favour of access, inclusion and accuracy for the disabled - is the ambitious I AM PWD (Inclusion in the Arts & Media of People with Disabilities) campaign launched three years ago by the Performers with Disabilities Tri-Union Committee of the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Actors' Equity Association.The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry,

"In the 21st century, media is the world's common cultural environment. Society's values and priorities are expressed and reflected in film, television, theatre, news and music. If you aren't seen and heard, you are invisible,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china," says the actor and tri-union committee chairman Robert David Hall (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation), the only disabled actor on primetime network TV. "I AM PWD will awaken the general public to the lack of inclusion and universal access for people with disabilities by uniting with a network of industry, labour,The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry, community and government allies."

Adam Moore,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. the Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Director of SAG-AFTRA, adds: "If you don't see your family or what you look like or your experience reflected in the fictional environments - and more increasingly the real environments in reality television - if you don't see yourself reflected there, it reinforces this idea that you may not have the same place at the table of society that other people do.Find a great buy mosaic Art deals on eBay!"