New disabled-led pressure group for the TV industry, Underlying Health Condition, is launched

Underlying Health Condition, a new pressure group for disabled representation in the TV industry, has been launched at London’s Tate Modern today.

The group is headed by Jack Thorne, Genevieve Barr, Katie Player and Holly Lubran, and over 100 members of the industry’s disabled community attended the launch.

Their recommendations include:

● A line in the budget of every High End Television (HETV) programme for Reasonable Adjustments.

● The Disabled Freelancer Fund – a new levy of 0.1% to create a dedicated fund for disabled freelancers to access.

● Accessibility Coordinators –  to ensure that the actor/crew member receives the accommodations that are needed so that they can fully execute their job.

● Studios & Facilities Fund – a one off fund for studios and facilities companies to access, in order to build disabled toilets, quiet rooms, install ramps, and other facilities.

As part of the launch, a damning report into the lack of accessibility for disabled professionals both on and off screen, within production facilities and studios of the UK’s TV industry, was revealed, on what is also the International Day of Disabled Persons.

Download the full report here: Underlying Health Condition Report TV

It showed:

● Woeful inadequacies in accessibility for disabled professionals across the UK’s filming facilities and studios
● No single facilities company can provide a fully accessible unit base
● Only one facilities company in the whole of the UK (that responded) has an accessible toilet facility
● 50% of respondents didn’t know if they were able to make their fleet accessible should a Production require it, with 10% giving a flat-out no
● 78.8% of UK studios have no hazard warning surfaces at the top of stairwells, essential for the blind or visually impaired
● 90.9% of studios who responded do not have buttons, signs or maps in a tactile format making it close to impossible to navigate these spaces independently
● Only 21.2% of respondents said they had an induction loop or closed captioning technology installed

Underlying Health Condition (UHC) plan to establish a Steering Group comprising of pan-industry wide representatives from broadcasters, SVODs, industry bodies, facilities companies, studios, disabled creatives and freelancers, and many more.

UHC spent 6 months reaching out to a range of studios and facilities companies across the whole of the UK. The surveys were completed independently by people who work for or on behalf of the studios.

The group was first announced during Thorne’s blistering MacTaggart lecture, the prestigious keynote speech of the globally renowned industry event, The Edinburgh TV Festival, in August this year, in which he highlighted Television’s failings in representation of the disabled community both on and off screen.

UHC believes in the Social Model of Disability which states that disabled people are not disabled by their impairments but rather it is the society around them that is disabling.

The group believes that if the building and the spaces we work in become accessible, then better inclusion and representation on and off screen can follow.

The pressure group’s aim is to target structural change within the industry in order to bring about improved accessibility and working conditions for a more inclusive working experience for all.

Of the survey results, Thorne, Barr, Player and Lubran said;

“Disabled people make up 20% of this population, and yet the Creative Diversity Network found that disabled people are under-represented at all organisational levels, making up just 7% of television employees overall; 8.2% of on-screen representation, 5.4% of people who work off screen, and at the top, just 3.6% of Executive Producers, are disabled. The deficit in those statistics are felt and translated through the television box – to those sitting in front of it.

One of the major factors to this lack of representation is the dire state in which we find ourselves in our basic working conditions. Not having a safe space to work, nor the facilities needed to carry out our creative roles, down to the nitty gritty of not even having the most basic of human rights, an accessible toilet!

“One of the biggest findings from both surveys is that disabled access is simply not thought about; it is not planned for or integrated into the structure and design of our spaces and that has got to change.

“In 2018, the Creative Diversity Network, in partnership with all major UK broadcasters, announced to set a target of doubling disability representation in front and behind the camera from 4.5% to 9% by 2021. In 2020 that growth was only 0.9% and that is simply not enough to make representation truly proportional. In fact, according to the CDN, it will take until 2041, at the current rate of growth, for disability in off-screen roles to truly reflect the make-up of the UK. We cannot wait that long.

“The Social Model states that disabled people are not disabled by their impairments but rather by the attitude and geography of the society in which they live. It is society itself that’s disabling, when it makes transport impossible to share, when it shows little flexibility in the workplace, when it is built around the needs of certain people rather than the needs of all.

“The results of the survey aside, this is not a campaign made in anger but in hope. This is about providing a blueprint for meaningful change; we have four key recommendations to which we want all industry leaders to pledge to support and actually ensure are met, in order to provide a working experience that so many take for granted.”

Download the full report here: Underlying Health Condition Report TV