Recap: Disability representation in media

An Overview of the August 2026 Understanding Ableism Webinar: “Disability Representation in Popular Media”

By Sara Marshall, AmeriCorps KCDC Coordinator 

(Watch the webinar here on our YouTube channel.)

Our August 2026 Understanding Ableism webinar explored how disability is portrayed in film, television, theater and other forms of popular media, and how those portrayals can influence the way people understand disability in everyday life.

This webinar also included several audience polls, inviting participants to reflect on familiar examples and consider their own reactions before hearing from the panelists. 

Media can offer some of the most visible examples of disability that people encounter, particularly for those without much personal experience with disability. That visibility can create opportunities for disabled people to see themselves represented, but it can also reinforce narrow ideas about what disability looks like. A single character or storyline can become disproportionately influential when audiences have few other examples to draw from. 

Rather than asking whether a portrayal is simply “good” or “bad,” the conversation focused on the complexity of representation. What happens when one portrayal becomes the public's primary understanding of a disability? What changes when disabled people are involved in creating the story? And what does it look like when disability is treated as one part of a character's life rather than the entirety of their identity? 

Background on Panelists

Elizabeth Ralston is an accessibility consultant and founder of the Seattle Cultural Accessibility Consortium, an organization that helps the arts sector become more accessible to people of all abilities. Through her consulting work, Ralston helps organizations assess accessibility across their programs, marketing, meetings and broader organizational systems. She also provides training and coaching around ableism and accessibility.  

Mandy West is an Independent Living Specialist at Disability Empowerment Center, where she provides peer support to people with disabilities. Her work includes facilitating peer support groups, community outreach, navigating social services, skill building and helping people troubleshoot barriers. 

Key Takeaways

The panelists emphasized that disability representation is not one-size-fits-all. When audiences repeatedly encounter the same limited portrayals, those representations can shape assumptions about what disability looks like and what disabled people are capable of. The discussion highlighted the value of seeing a wider range of disability experiences and identities represented in media. 

The panel also explored the importance of portraying disabled people as whole people rather than making disability the entirety of a character's story. Disabled characters can have relationships, careers, interests, families and ordinary experiences that have little to do with their disability. The panelists also discussed how familiar tropes, including portraying disabled people as tragic, dangerous or exceptionally inspirational, can reinforce assumptions even when a portrayal appears positive on the surface. 

Another major theme was who gets to tell disability stories. The panelists discussed the value of disabled actors and creators being involved not only on screen, but also in writing, consulting, directing and other parts of the creative process. Lived experience can bring perspectives that may otherwise be overlooked and can help create more varied and nuanced portrayals. 

The panelists repeatedly returned to the importance of nuance, diversity and disabled involvement. Disability does not look one way, and disabled people are not defined solely by their disabilities. Meaningful representation can mean seeing disability as an ordinary part of a person's life rather than a tragedy, a superpower, a moral failing or a problem that needs to be solved. Perhaps most importantly, representation is not only about seeing disabled people on screen. It is also about whether disabled people have opportunities to create the stories, make decisions, shape the production process and tell their own experiences. When disabled people are able to participate in telling their own stories, the message is not simply that they are represented. It is that their stories matter.