Disability too white
Not enough media representation of disabled people of colour – Is this still true today?
The article was published in 2016. There has certainly been an increase in disabled and disabled people of colour on the TV recently, especially the BBC. Is it proportionate? I don’t know.
I know that the UK census (2021) states that 17.7% of the population in England and 21% in Wales have a disability. So, to be proportionate, around 20% of presenters on TV should have a disability.
12% of the total population aged 16 and over are from a minority ethnic background. ( House of Commons Library analysis of survey microdata. (ONS (2021). Annual Population Survey Three-Year Pooled Dataset, January 2018 – December 2020. [data collection]. 2nd Edition. UK Data Service. SN: 8855, DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-8855-2
Based on data from the Annual Population Survey, an estimated 10% of disabled people aged 16 and over are from a minority ethnic background. (https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9602/CBP-9602.pdf)
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/124255/bbc1-bbc2-diversity-monitoring.pdf
https://disabilityhorizons.com/2022/10/less-than-2-of-characters-in-the-top-uk-tv-show-are-disabled/
Unfortunately, disabled people of colour were not identified in this report.
So, although the figures show that there have been improvements in the number of disabled people appearing on our TV’s, as presenters and as characters in shows. It is not clear how many are disabled people of colour. However, despite the improvements, there is still much work to be done.
The Independent reported
“Disabled people are “shut out” of the UK television industry but the BAME population is now over-represented on screen, compared with the overall population, the most comprehensive survey of diversity in broadcasting has found.” (https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/tv-industry-disabled-people-shut-out-bame-representation- Adam Sherwin (Feb 2020)
Things are changing, but there is still much work to be done!
Great point Lorraine! Representation is so important, it’s good to see that there has been progress in terms of representation of disabled people in the media, although as you highlight there is still a lot of work to be done. This makes me think of how we can increase representation within our teaching spaces, in the examples of work we share with students for example..
These stats are really interesting Lorraine. I hadn’t thought to look up the reported numbers about representation on TV. Without researching the details, I had a sense that there are more disabled people on TV now than before, I could think of comedians, paralympian sports commentators and a few people on Strictly Come Dancing but the only person of colour I could think of who is also disabled was Ade Adepitan, the travel TV presenter. It is good to see that there is increased diversity overall but it seems this is still lacking with intersectional characteristics. It is also curious to note that increased diversity is in some parts of the TV world but not on all channels and not behind-the-scenes. There is obviously an appetite for diversity from viewing audiences but I guess fair representation needs to be addressed in all aspects of TV jobs and not just to make the channel look good from a viewing perspective. Definitely more work to be done!