The Future Of

Disability and the Media

Episode Summary

The media has started to represent diversity in many forms, but how far has it really come in its portrayals of people with disability?

Episode Notes

One billion people live with a disability, each with their own unique experience of the world, yet the media still largely portrays people with disability using traditional and inaccurate stereotypes. 

In this episode, Amelia is joined by Curtin University Professors Katie Ellis and Mike Kent, who discuss how disability is a social construct, rather than a medical one. They explore some of the ways people with disability are portrayed in the media, highlighting both progressive and entrenched examples. They also take a look at some of the ways COVID-19 has made technology and daily life more accessible for all people. 

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Email thefutureof@curtin.edu.au.

Curtin University supports academic freedom of speech. The views expressed in The Future Of podcast may not reflect those of the university.

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You can read the full transcript for the episode here.

Episode Transcription

Announcer:

00:00 This is The Future Of. Where experts share their vision of the future and how their work is helping shape it for the better.

Amelia Searson:

00:09 And welcome back into the new year! I'm Amelia Searson, and today is our first episode for 2021. The media is a part of most of our lives, whether that be through social platforms like Facebook or more traditional forms like television, news and radio. They all play a big role in influencing our perceptions of the world and how it works.

Amelia Searson:

00:28 But how often do you see someone with disability in the media? 1 billion people in the world live with a disability, and yet they're rarely represented in the media or when they are, it's often through negative stereotypes or inaccurate portrayals. As someone who is wanting to become a journalist, it's important that I learn how to better represent and re-image disability in society through more accurate representations in the media. To discuss this topic with me today, are professors Katie Ellis and Mike Kent. Katie and Mike are from the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University. Thanks so much for coming in today.

Mike Kent:

01:02 Thanks for asking us.

Katie Ellis:

01:03 Thank you.

Amelia Searson:

01:04 So Katie, COVID-19 of course has been in the media nonstop this year, still is of course. What do you think the media coverage during this time has revealed about our current attitudes and treatment of people who have disability?

Katie Ellis:

01:18 It's a really great question because we're at a particular point in COVID-19 where there've been lots of changes. So we've seen a lot of different types of representation about disability with COVID-19. So at the beginning, I think people with disabilities were kind of really being used to reassure everyone else that this terrible unknown disease wouldn't really impact them, it was just people who maybe had pre-existing medical conditions. And then as we travelled a bit further down, we saw that COVID-19 really affected everyone. So, the media started recognising the vulnerability of people in disabled care and aged care and things like that.

Katie Ellis:

02:02 And then I think as we moved further down, people started empathising with the disability situation because we were seeing representation on TV that didn't reflect our reality stuck at home. People in Summer Bay still out there on the beach! We couldn't do that, we were at home. So it became important for the whole population to see our reality on TV. And this is something people with disability don't get all of the time. And then all of a sudden it was all of us, saying that these TV shows really aren't reflecting what I go through.

Mike Kent:

02:35 It's interesting also during COVID-19 we suddenly saw that things we've been told weren't possible for people with disabilities suddenly everyone was doing. So, from something as simple as Pokémon GO, you couldn't play Pokémon GO if you couldn't walk around in the environment collecting Pokémon. And the manufacturer said, No, that's an essential part of it until everyone was locked down. And they said, Actually no, now we've changed you can play at home. No problem at all. Even more so, people suddenly discovered that actually people can work from home if they can't commute into work every day, they can have a computer set up to be accessible for them. And suddenly everyone was doing it. Before we went on, we were talking about how headphones sold out and that sort of thing because everyone moved to a home office. People with disability for years have been told, Well, no, we can't have you working from home and we can't give you a job because we can't accommodate you.

Katie Ellis:

03:30 So then we saw a lot of people with disabilities contributing to the media and commenting and writing blog posts and social media posts about how we've been telling you all along that we could work and study from home and now we all have to do it.

Amelia Searson:

03:44 I think it helped that people were really hungry for news during that time, and they were looking for diverse voices. And just going back onto your point, Mike, do you think going into the future this is spearheaded more, I guess, workplace opportunities for people with disability?

Mike Kent:

04:03 I hope so. I really hope so and I think it probably has just because I think actually the way we engage with the workplace has changed. We're not going to see the same numbers of people moving into CBDs [central business districts]. We can already see people moving from city centres into regional areas in Australia, on the assumption that they can now work from home. And well, that's its own sort of thing going on. I think is a helpful side effect, people with disabilities will have more opportunities.

Amelia Searson:

04:33 And Mike, a lot of your research within the centre takes a social approach to disability. Can you explain what that means?

Mike Kent:

04:41 I can at length, but I'll try and keep it short! So the social approach or the social model of disability really it's quite revolutionary. Although its origins are probably in the 70s, it's the idea that we have this medical approach to disability, that someone with a disability is sick and needs curing and it's sort of their problem. So it's really individualised, so you're a person who's a wheelchair user or someone who's blind or someone who's dyslexic. So they are your problems and society just has nothing to do with it, it's all your problem. The social approach says it's actually no society's problem. The fact that I'm a wheelchair user (and I'm not a wheelchair user for those who can't see me) means that the problem is someone decided to make stairs going up to that door. They weren't necessary. That could have been a ramp.

Mike Kent:

05:41 So that's what disables people, it's society and the attitudes of society that cause the problems rather than it being borne by the individual. And I suppose the other social aspect of it is trying to say that people with disabilities have common cause. So I am a person with dyslexia, but I still support wheelchair ramps. There is an idea that there is a large group of people with disabilities and they all need to advocate together to change society. From the technology perspective, it's even more interesting; it's very hard to make a beach wheelchair accessible with nature. But once we start using online platforms and things like this, these are entirely made by people. So whether something's accessible or not is definitely a choice. You can't just go, Oh no, that's just beach sand, it's just tricky. You go, Well, actually, your website has all these little hidden buttons on it, which means a screen reader can't use it, which means someone who's blind can't access it easily. And that's a decision that's being made rather than just an inevitable part of the natural world.

Amelia Searson:

06:55 It's so easy and I guess convenient for decision makers to just palm it off or put it in the too hard basket, isn't it?

Mike Kent:

07:01 Absolutely.

Katie Ellis:

07:03 And I think it's the persistence of the medical model that you were talking about that really creates this situation where we're in, where people do think about disability as a problem with someone's body. So that problem should be solved within the body, according to the medical model. But what Mike and I are looking at is the way society creates barriers around that body that don't have to be there. They are, like Mike's saying, they are decisions made by people. And particularly when it comes to new media, we don't have to make these decisions.

Amelia Searson:

07:34 That actually links in quite well to a perception that I hear quite a lot, which is people with disability are either, in inverted commas, "charity cases or heroes", that there can't be anything else. I hear that quite a lot. What are your thoughts on that?

Katie Ellis:

07:53 Yeah, and I think the media really plays into that, that they're the two representations we get of people with disabilities, either they're a charity that we can give to, to make us feel better about ourselves, or they're an inspiration. So Stella Young talked about inspiration porn in a TEDx that's widely available online. And she was really trying to draw attention to the fact that people with disabilities are treated as inspirational just for living their lives and doing ordinary things that people without disability wouldn't be celebrated in the same way. And she said in her TEDx talk that the media just can't get past that. They can't get past the idea that people with disabilities are inspiration.

Amelia Searson:

08:39 For anyone interested in listening to that TEDx talk we can link that in our show notes. So Katie, what are some of the more traditional stereotypes the media uses when they're representing people with disability? And what impact do you think these stereotypes can have on the community?

Katie Ellis:

08:57 OK so I think the traditional stereotypes that we see are the ones we are talking about, tragedy, inspiration. Another one is disability being a punishment for evil. We see that a lot in soap operas and crime dramas and things like that, that people with disabilities are punished in a particular way for doing something wrong. In the crime drama we also see there's a stereotype it's been called 'the Defective Detective'. So that's the idea that a detective might have some disability or mental health condition that gives them a greater insight and greater ability to solve a crime or makes them a bit quirky and more interesting to watch on TV. So, you could argue that's a negative stereotype or that's a positive stereotype, but it's definitely a characterisation that has emerged, particularly when crime drama was really popular, which is not so much now. Maybe if we look at reality TV, we do see the inspirational model coming up a lot, or this is something for us to feel sorry for.

Mike Kent:

10:06 Yeah, the villain who's evil because they have a disability and they never got over it. That's even an earlier version of the disability as punishment. And I think it's also important to... We often frame this from an entirely Western perspective. I'm working with a group of scholars in Africa at the moment, some of the perceptions around disability as a punishment from God effectively to a family or to an individual that's again, one of those recurring themes, which is obviously particularly harmful people with disabilities.

Katie Ellis:

10:46 When I was doing my PhD I was reading a lot of work from disability scholars about how in the Bible that disability is often used as a punishment for wrongdoing. But there are also instances in the Bible where disability is pointed out as a social thing, like make the path straight so that people can walk on them. So, I think we really need to be careful about saying, it's a wholly negative or wholly positive.

Mike Kent:

11:15 The Bible is old school media.

Katie Ellis:

11: 18 Yeah, the Bible is old school media! Old school for me. It doesn't figure into my research at all these days, so I don't know why I brought it up. But I think it goes to…Even in the same immediate texts we can have progressive and oldest our representations. And I think for me now, and from my work now, what I really like is the conversations that arise around particular representation. So when people do watch a movie or they do watch a TV show, then they go on Facebook or Twitter and talk about it. And in that way, we can come to understanding experiences of disabilities in different peoples’ points of view about whether this is a positive or a negative, realistic, or unrealistic.

Mike Kent:

12:00 I'm taking a right angle to your question. It also leads questions about representation of actors with disability. So the people who are actors and do have a disability, her name starts with M and she's a deaf actress? [Marlee Matlin] Yes, thank you – she's a good example of an actress is a person with a disability and that is accommodated in the roles she often plays. Whereas if you have someone like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, they could have actually got a person who was on the spectrum to have played the role rather than him being a great actor for pretending to be someone that lots of people are.

Katie Ellis:

12:44 Yeah, and that's something we see a lot, people getting nominated for Academy Awards for portraying a person with a disability, rather than that role having actually gone to a person with a disability.

Amelia Searson:

12:56 And how do you think that makes people with disability feel? Do you think generally people would prefer to have someone with a disability representing them? Or do you think it's, I guess, just good to have the disability representation in the movies or the TV shows?

Mike Kent:

13:12 Diving into interesting grey areas!

Katie Ellis:

13:15 Without wanting to speak for anyone else with a disability, but my point of view is that we should be more supportive of actors with disabilities and ensuring they get these roles because right now they're not. And often the argument seems to be is, Oh, there needed to be a scene where that person was dreaming and they weren't disabled or, We need the time in their life prior to when they acquired a disability, so we needed an able-bodied person to portray the role. Well, why do we need these dream sequences? Right. I remember was it Artie in Glee? There was a lot of controversy around him that could have been portrayed by a person in a wheelchair.

Amelia Searson:

14:00 Mike, what are some recent examples of progressive representations of people with disability in the media that you've seen?

Mike Kent:

14:07 Hmm. See how it's interesting. Because I knew that you were going to ask that question. I think Dylan Alcott, who is the face of ANZ bank, he's fantastic just because the fact that he is a man who's a wheelchair user, even famous for being a wheelchair user. That's not what they play on in the ads, they just go, He's a famous athlete using his Apple Watch to pay for his meal because he's left his wallet behind. Just scenarios that don't really focus on the fact that he's a wheelchair user or a person with disability. And those sort of... I'm not sure if I'm using the right language, but ‘normalised’ portrayal. Here is a person that we are using to advertise, we're using them because they're a famous person. They also happen to be a person with disability or they're not a famous person they just happen to be a person with disability, but people with disability exist in the world, so we're using them as part of our representation, I think is something that's becoming more and more common, which I think is really great to see.

Katie Ellis:

15:14 I think we see that more in advertising than any other form of media, seems to be we can have these moments where we have scenes of people with disabilities, who are part of the consumer group, I guess.

Amelia Searson:

15:27 Why do you think that might be that we see more representation in ads than in movies?

Mike Kent:

15:33 I think it's partly because ads are less problematic and try to reach a wider audience. So I think advertising goes, We're going to try and make the world the way people see the world, which isn't necessarily the same, good looking white, American-accented actors, to take the stereotype to its full extent. But people with disabilities exist in the world, we're trying to sell our products, so we're representing the world back at them. And perhaps is less opportunity for disturbing narratives around that as well.

Amelia Searson:

16:07 Katie, your advocacy has led to the increasing adoption of audio description on Australian screens. Can you tell me what audio description is and the recent progress that's happening in this area?

Katie Ellis:

16:19 OK, so audio description is I guess exactly what it sounds like. It's an audio description. It's a track of narration describing in audio what you see on the screen of a TV show, movie, or even a live performance. It can describe characters, costumes, facial expressions, the weather, what other things are happening in the scene at the same time. And it makes visual media accessible to people who are blind or have low vision, so people who can't see the screen. The advocacy that Mike has also been involved in audio description has actually led to the introduction of audio description on the Australian public broadcasters this year from, I think it was July. So the ABC and the SBS, and they've introduced about 14 hours a week. And this audio description is something that the vision impaired community have been advocating for in Australia for about 30 years. So they're, if we can think of a good thing that's happening 2020, this is my good thing.

Mike Kent:

17:29 Yeah, absolutely. And it really is catch up. We're the last English speaking developed country, or we were, to not have audio description available on TV. Well before this Netflix had audio description on all of its shows, including multiple in languages. So yes, this is a best thing in 2020, but it's also the saddest thing in 2020. It's sad that we're telling you what audio description is. It's like people always go Like captions go well, yes. And also entirely not at all, but captions, the reverse almost.

Amelia Searson:

18:11 Mike, your research revolves a lot around digital technology. Can you explain some of the ways that digital technology is both creating an alleviating disability?

Mike Kent:

18:21 It sort of gets back the point I was making earlier about when a digital technology and the media that it produces is entirely made by people. So it's particularly frustrating when people make decisions to make it inaccessible to some group of people. And even more so...I'm going to go on a bit of a rant now so I apologise. Digital technology can be converted to so many different things. So if I've got a page of information, say it's page of text, I can read it on a screen, that screen can be enlarged, the background can be changed. I can have it read to me by a machine, I can feel it on a braille tablet. So all these different options to be accessible to the widest audience. And similarly, you can put that information in using a braille typewriter, or I can use spoken word, or I can use a traditional keyboard or eye tracking software.

Mike Kent:

19:26 So at its most base level, digital technology is incredibly accessible, both to consume and produce. So as soon as we then take the next step, inevitably we stop making as accessible. So we decide, are we going to frame the text in a particular way, or we're going to rather than have it as information, we're going to have it as a picture so that it's harder to recognise from machines that then translate it to braille or speech or that sort of thing. So it's not really a two edge sword, it should be really straightforward and simple, but it is very frustrating someone coming from the social model to see when things which should be so fantastically accessible are then made harder and harder to access generally for aesthetics, or worse, to comply with accessibility laws. So some of your listeners might remember when every web page had that stupid shadow behind every image.

Mike Kent:

20:29 So it looked like it was 3D. So you'd have a little picture and then there'd be a little shadow behind it. I'm using my fingers for people who can't see me. I'm sorry. And then when we had alternative texts, which is the text screen writers used to describe things, in order to be thorough, they would say, And here's a picture of Mike, wiggling his finger and then, Here's a shadow of the picture of Mike wiggling, his finger. And it just made the whole thing completely inaccessible in order to comply with accessibility laws. So we get this added layer of frustration there.

Amelia Searson:

20:59 Yeah. It's also very complex really, isn't it? But it shouldn't be-

Mike Kent:

21:03 It's right. It shouldn't be, it should be really quite simple.

Katie Ellis:

21:06 If I can bring it back to COVID again.

Mike Kent:

21:08 Please!

Katie Ellis:

21:09 I think we all experienced during COVID that we all needed to access information in different ways. When other things were going on, we weren't necessarily taking in all the information that we needed to at a time when we really needed to be completely up on all the information that was given to us. And what we did find during COVID were things like infographics and simple English and plain language descriptions where the way we could really understand our situations. And these are disability accessibility features as well. Again, it's a shame that things became more popularised when everyone needed it. Not when people with disabilities said, we need this all along, but there's another example of how making the world accessible according to the social model really does help us all.

Mike Kent:

22:05 Can I jump in there to say how frustrating it is that it came from a position where people went Oh no, that's impossible, we can't do that because it's too complicated to, Oh, in fact we can do it. And in fact, one of our technicians did it from his kitchen because he couldn't come into the office. So really it wasn't that hard.

Katie Ellis:

22:21 Something that was really interesting at the time of the quarantine in Perth, Mike and I were analysing the results of some research we did into captions, which is a disability media accessibility feature for people who have hearing impairments or who are deaf. We make captions available on 22 units in our school to anyone in the unit and said, Have a go tell us what you think about these captions as a learning tool and overwhelmingly the feedback was that people were using it while they were studying at home trying to stay focused when there are all sorts of domestic distractions going on. And this is a project we did prior to COVID, but we were analysing the results during COVID. So that was really interesting for us to see that some disability accessibility features could be potentially so useful.

Mike Kent:

23:21 Yep. That's an ongoing... As I think all the universities, particularly here in Western Australia now looking going, what if we get a second wave and we can't have lectures in 2021? Maybe we'll see that same thing with suddenly these accessibility features just... Which were impossible before suddenly pop up. I hope so. It'd be a nice...

Katie Ellis:

23:45 And if not, make it accessible for the students with disabilities.

Mike Kent:

23:48 Yeah.

Amelia Searson:

23:49 Yeah. And mentioning 2021, that leads well into my next question that I have for both of you looking into the future, what do you hope society will be like for people with a disability? Katie, would you like to start?

Katie Ellis:

24:01 I will start. I hope society will be more inclusive and we won't need a pandemic to make Pokémon GO accessible to people with disabilities, who'd like to pay Pokémon GO from home. I hope the attitudes about disability change, and I hope that the media plays a role in that by showing us some stories, some more Tyrion Lannisters, who we didn't get to talk about in the podcast. Some really important characters who have disabilities in TV shows. And I hope people with disabilities also lead new media representations of disability from their perspective in the way they would like to.

Mike Kent:

24:41 I think people working in the disability and accessibility field, like us we're a bit like dentists. Dentists would really like to be unemployed because no one needs dentists anymore. And I think we're very much the same, from that social model of disability, society's creating the problem. If society stopped creating the problem, there'd be nothing for us to critique. We'd just go, Oh, that person's a wheelchair user, but they're not disabled by being a wheelchair user because we've accommodated them with wheelchair ramps, just to go back to my original example. So there are some aspects of disability that the social model doesn't entail. So some people live with chronic pain and things like this, which are beyond the scope of when we're talking about the social nature of disability. But within the social nature of disability, I would love to see the problem solved. That we don't talk about it anymore because we're post disability or something like that.

Amelia Searson:

25:48 Definitely agree with you there, Mike, as someone who is wanting to become a journalist, I hope that I can be a part of that movement and hopefully continue to see change within this area. Well, that's all we have time for today, but before we go, if our listeners want to find out more about you and your research, where should they find you?

Mike Kent:

26:07 Well, we're at the Centre of Culture and Technology at Curtin University, and I'm sure you'll be able to post a link to our work and the rest of our team are accessible through that.

Amelia Searson:

26:18 Of course. And for anyone listening who would like to access this podcast, we do have a transcript available as well. Thank you, Katie and Mike, for sharing your knowledge on this topic with me today.

Mike Kent:

26:32 Thanks very much.

Katie Ellis:

26:32 Thank you.

Mike Kent:

26:33 Very glad to hear you have a transcript!

Amelia Searson:

26:35 You've been listening to The Future Of. A podcast powered by Curtin University. If you would like to share your thoughts on disability and the media, or have any questions, please send us an email at thefutureofatcurtin.edu.au. And if you liked what you've heard or read, please subscribe to our podcast and share this episode with your friends and family. Bye for now.