A new study has found that nearly 80% of characters portrayed with disabilities in scripted TV series from 2016-2023 were played by able-bodied actors.
“The State of Disability Representation on Television: An Analysis of Scripted TV Series From 2016 to 2023,” commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation in collaboration with the Geena Davis Institute, was based on a survey of 350 scripted TV shows from 2016 to 2023, with recent shows like “Sex Education,” “As We See It” and “Echo” highlighted for portraying disabled characters navigating dating and using wheelchairs. In total, only 3.9% of characters had a disability across the 350 shows, a disproportionately small number considering that nearly 30% of the U.S. population identifies as having a disability.
