In Ancient Greece, women were forbidden from acting, and men played all the female roles. If someone landed on Earth in the year 2020, they might believe a similar ban applies to disability on screen: in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is non-disabled actors portraying characters who are blind, deaf, autistic, or have other disabilities.
This is precisely what the Ruderman Family Foundation is working to change—breaking down a damaging and absurd status quo to promote the genuine inclusion of people with disabilities in the entertainment industry. “I believe that popular entertainment shapes culture,” said Jay Ruderman, the Israeli-American lawyer who serves as the foundation’s president, in an interview with the *Jerusalem Post*. “And because it is so influential, it’s crucial to drive change in this space—it can truly transform how we think.”
The call is for studios and production companies to actively commit to inclusion, making film and television capable of reflecting “the diversity we live in.” This shift could finally help society normalize disability. “When society is not inclusive,” Ruderman adds, “disability is treated as a matter of charity, as *the other*, as people who need help and pity instead of full integration.” These are not minor concerns: to see disability is to accept it.
The foundation works on multiple fronts. One of its most visible initiatives is the Seal of Authentic Representation, awarded to films and series that demonstrate a real commitment to casting actors with disabilities.
Among the awarded productions are Netflix’s Tales of the City, featuring Deaf actor and director Dickie Hearts as Mateo, a Deaf butler; ABC’s soap opera General Hospital, in which actress and disability advocate Maysoon Zayid, who has cerebral palsy, plays Zahra Amir—Zayid is also one of the first Muslim female comedians in America; Years and Years, a British drama co-produced by BBC and HBO, where actress Ruth Madeley, who has spina bifida, portrays Rosie Lyons, a single mother living with the same condition; Loudermilk, a comedy series by Audience that, in its 2017–2018 season, included actor Mat Fraser, who has phocomelia. And also Raising Dion, a sci-fi series based on a comic and short film, currently streaming on Netflix, which features a young girl in a wheelchair, played by nine-year-old Sammi Haney, who was born with brittle bone disease. More recently, the film Give Me Liberty by Kirill Mikhanovsky has also received recognition (reviewed in this issue by Claudio Cinus).
The “Authentic Representation” seal is awarded to productions that meet two criteria: actors with disabilities must have at least five lines of dialogue, and the work must be intended for a wide audience. To support the training of these actors, the foundation has signed a partnership with the Yale School of Drama—the first collaboration of its kind between a major drama school and an initiative for actors with disabilities. The first recipient of its annual scholarship was Jessy Yates, an actress and comedian with cerebral palsy who began performing in Cleveland, her hometown, before studying at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and later appearing in the TV series Speechless (2016).
The foundation has also partnered with *Variety* magazine and took part in the 2019 *Variety* Inclusion Summit in Hollywood, which highlighted the ongoing underrepresentation of people with disabilities in the entertainment sector. When the foundation called on networks to commit to increasing authentic disability representation, CBS was the first to respond. “Generally speaking,” Ruderman noted, “things tend to move faster in television than in the film industry.” And now may be the perfect moment—pandemic notwithstanding—since the entertainment world is actively seeking authenticity. And authenticity, it seems, also pays off in terms of audience. And revenue.
