American Disability Act Movie

Robert M. Hensel once said, “There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see a person as more.” The American Disability Act states that a disability is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. According to the Ruderman’s Foundation study, 95% of television characters with disabilities are played by able-bodied actors. It's a percentage that it doesn’t meet the standard when 20% of the US population is identified with some type of disability. While there are actors out there, with disabilities they're not always casted. Few are the exception to this rule, such as RJ Mitte (Breaking Bad), Daryl Mitchell (NCIS New Orleans), Gaten Matarazzo (Stranger Things), and Peter Dinklage

The word stigma has a Greek origin; it comes from the word “mark”. Stigma is a negative label appointed to a specific group of people. Jay Ruderman states, "Because of the widespread stigma in Hollywood against hiring actors with disabilities, we very rarely see people with real disabilities on screen," To all of us out there that consume and invest our time and money in the entertainment industry, we should really take into account the importance of what we really need to see on the screens to make a positive impact in our society in this case seeing real actors with disabilities obtain their opportunities. He continued stating, "By systematically casting able-bodied actors portraying characters with disabilities, Hollywood is hurting the inclusion of people with disabilities in our country." Casting crews, directors, and producers need to realize that this should be a wakeup call for them and that they’re actually hurting this community instead of opening doors for them. They should start thinking about the impact they make in these people’s lives, how they’re stigmatized, and if they were just given a shot, how they could change the perspective of many out there. Stereotypes are fixed ideas regarding a particular person, group of people, or

Panel speakers from the Ruderman Foundation addressed the exclusion of disabled people in the industry in a conference by stating, “You discourage people with disabilities from pursuing careers in acting, writing, producing, directing, etc. You heighten unemployment of a group that, inside and outside of Hollywood, already deals with it more than the non-disabled population”. Over the past couple of years, diversity has been a real controversial issue on Hollywood, giving women more opportunities in direction, production, leading roles, providing more roles for people of minority groups etc… but it seems that still people with disabilities far short from Hollywood’s eyes, and are still excluded and marginizaled from participating in this industry. Academy Award Winner, Marlee Matlin states, 20 percent of the population have some type of disability… but if you judged our existence by what you see on TV you would think we made up less than one percent.” 5% is the number that represents actors with disabilities in the industry, certainly that is a very low number to represent a group on the wide screen. This can be appointed as one of the issues why people are not aware of the existence and importance of the disabled