Disabled People Transforming Media Culture for a More Inclusive World

This book tells the stories of disabled people who have been influential in creating modern mass media.

Through the voices of key disabled media makers and collaborators, the author highlights the ways in which their contributions are changing society’s understanding of disability and shaping mass media and culture. Spanning a range of media formats – television/streaming productions, performances, podcasts, TED Talks, films, reality TV, graphic novels, and social media channels – the book illustrates how disabled people are confronting the marginalization they have faced in mass media for decades. Modern disabled media creators are leveraging new media platforms to recognize the lived experiences of disability and their authentic place in media culture.

This innovative and thought-provoking volume will be an important read for scholars, disability advocates, and students of Disability Studies, Mass Communication/Media Studies, as well as mass media production faculty, disabled people, and their allies.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Beth A. Haller, Ph.D., has been researching mass media content about the disability community since the early 1990s. She developed some of the first university courses in the U.S. and Canada focused on disability in the media, for undergraduate and graduate Disability Studies programs at Towson University in Maryland, the City University of New York (CUNY), York University in Toronto, Canada, and the University of Texas-Arlington. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 Routledge Companion to Disability and Media (with Gerard Goggin of the University of Sydney and Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is currently co-founder/co-director of the international nonprofit organization, the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment. She is a retired Professor Emerita in the Mass Communication department at Towson University. She identifies as a neurodiverse person with multiple disabilities/chronic illnesses.