Performers with disabilities (PWDs) face the same barriers to obtaining full employment that many of the 54 million Americans with disabilities encounter.  However, PWDs also experience challenges that are unique to the entertainment industry.  As a result, the Performers With Disabilities Committee of the Screen Actors Guild produced a groundbreaking report, documenting the underemployment of PWDs and proposing important recommendations.          

The Campaign for Unity has reviewed and supports the survey created and summarized by the UCLA National Arts and Disability Center. In fact, all three CFU candidates who were on the Board in 2002-2003 voted in support of the IACF grant application that made this report possible: Morgan Fairchild, Vivicca Whitsett and Trista Delamere. That Report provides critical employment data that SAG leadership must consider, and makes recommendations SAG should implement.  (For more information regarding the Report, please visit www.sag.org.)

The Campaign for Unity will fight for the progress of PWDs, and to remove barriers to their full employment.  Accordingly, we propose the following platform:

1. We support the consideration of PWDs for any role concerning a character with a disability, and that the choice of actor should be based upon overall ability to play the role.

2. We support the use of PWDs for roles not requiring an able-bodied character.  This implements a primary focus of the SAG report and the ADA Anniversary events surrounding the Report's release.

3. We support reasonable accommodations of PWDs in production.  These include:

• operating hours and order of performance that accommodate disabilities where not unreasonably burdensome to production operation and schedules.

• assistance for transportation to accommodate disabilities where the transportation costs are not substantially more excessive than for actors without disabilities.

• larger typeface of 14 point or more, in Arial font, for actors with low vision.

• accessible bathrooms even on sets with temporary construction, and sufficient accessible parking that remains unobstructed by set transportation or production vehicles.

• production guidelines for set crew, including the use of "people first" language to emphasize the actor as a person, who has a disability, second.      

4.   We respect the civil rights of PWDs to find gainful and satisfying employment, along with the spending power of the Americans with Disabilities community.  Accordingly, we believe that productions which include characters and actors who have disabilities will benefit the entertainment industry, the disability community, and society at large. Therefore, we will:

·         encourage the development of projects that tell the stories of persons living with different disabilities from across the entire spectrum of disabilities, and which will promote the employment of PWDs. 

·         create a speaker's bureau of PWDs to be available to address film schools, and to serve as advisors on film projects.  Additionally, as part of advice to studios, to directors and to screenwriters, these disability advisers would assist with fact checking on plots involving characters with disabilities, in order to promote authentic presentation of disabilities. 

·         pursue the prior commercial approval of manufacturers of products for the disability community, such as a wheelchair or other form of durable medical equipment, or assistive technology, to include those products for placement and demonstration in screen productions.

5. Create a Screen Actors Guild Advisory Commission on Performers with Disabilities, as a possible sub-committee of the PWD Committee, charged with oversight of the implementation of all recommendations of the SAG Report on Performers with Disabilities in the Entertainment Industry.  In particular, the SAG Commission on PWDs would ensure the continuing compilation of data regarding discrimination, accommodations and workplace opportunities for PWDs, and would solicit and receive reports on incidence of workplace discrimination based on disability.   

6. In our last two largest contract negotiations (TV/Theatrical and Commercials) those Campaign For Unity candidates who sat on the committees voted in support of demands to both producers and advertisers for increased roles for PWDs, and for adding PWD casting data to the EEOC casting data reports.  The tracking of PWD casting patterns will provide SAG with important data and bargaining leverage to force studios and advertisers to live up to their contractual agreement to accurately portray “the American Scene” in casting.