Acting the part: A thematic analysis of the experiences of actors with disabilities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Portrayals of disability in film and television are often unauthentic and stereotypical, influenced by perceptions of disability in society and the lack of disability representation in the industry. Actors with disabilities encounter unique barriers in the industry that limit their acting opportunities. The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of actors with disabilities in the Canadian film and television industry. Nine actors with physical or sensory disabilities who had experience acting in the Canadian film and television industry were recruited through social media posts. Participants completed individual semi-structured interviews discussing how their disability has affected their work as an actor. Interviews were transcribed, then coded using a thematic approach. Six participants engaged in a focus group to discuss and expand on preliminary findings. Two main themes were identified: (1) the unique experiences of actors with disabilities working in the industry; and (2) the impact of industry professionals' perceptions of disability on the experiences of actors with disabilities. Many actors experience inadequate accommodations, inaccessible work sites, stigma, and being limited to disability specific roles. As a result, actors with disabilities have implemented strategies to improve their success when faced with social and physical barriers in the industry. Authentic representation was identified as the necessary strategy to overcome barriers and create more equitable experiences for actors with disabilities. A transformation of current perceptions of disability within film and television is necessary to achieve authentic representation and create a more accurate perception of disability in society.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.019 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".