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Persons With Disabilities on Screen

The Academy of Motion Picture laid out sweeping eligibility reforms in its Best Picture category, with the aim of encouraging diversity and equitable representation on screen and off.

The film academy in September laid out sweeping eligibility reforms in its Best Picture category, with the aim of encouraging diversity and equitable representation on screen and off. 

In a joint statement, President of the Academy David Rubin and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson said the move is part of its Academy Aperture 2025 initiative.

“The aperture must widen to reflect our diverse global population in both the creation of motion pictures and in the audiences, who connect with them. The Academy is committed to playing a vital role in helping make this a reality,” they said. 

“We believe these inclusion standards will be a catalyst for long-lasting, essential change in our industry.” 

The reforms, which will come into effect in 2024 during the 96th Academy Awards, are established in four broad representation categories namely, on-screen; among the crew; at the studio; and in opportunities for training and advancement in other aspects of the film’s development and release. 

Each of the standards has detailed subcategories as well.  

According to the new rules, to meet the on-screen representation standard, a film must either have at least one lead character or a significant supporting character be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, at least 30 percent of secondary roles must be from two underrepresented groups or the main storyline, theme or narrative must be focused on an underrepresented group. 

As per the academy, underrepresented groups include women, people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+ or people with disabilities.  

Academy governors DeVon Franklin and Jim Gianopulos headed a task force to develop the standards that were created from a template inspired by the British Film Institute (BFI) Diversity Standards used for certain funding eligibility in the UK and eligibility in some categories of the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) Awards, but were adapted to serve the specific needs of the Academy.  

The Academy said it also consulted with the Producers Guild of America (PGA), as it presently does for Oscars eligibility. 

According to a report filed by Variety Magazine last year, there have been only two winning actors with disabilities — two! — in Oscar’s entire 91 years: Harold Russell (1946, “The Best Years of Our Lives”) and Marlee Matlin.  

This is despite a finding that since 1988, one-third of Oscar’s 30 lead actor winners were portraying a character with a disability, e.g. Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” 1989, through to Eddie Redmayne in 2015’s, “The Theory of Everything”.  

Margaret Njuguna


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