CHRISTIAN BRYANT: This is In The Loop I'm Christian Bryant before we get to all that we
want to talk about a story that's hiding in plain sight in this episode of In The Loop we're shining
a light on what it's like to live with some disabilities that are often considered invisible
ones that unless somebody told you they had them you just wouldn't know this includes conditions
like diabetes Vision or hearing problems and chronic pain there are also things like
autoimmune diseases developmental conditions like autism spectrum disorder and mental health issues
including anxiety and depression we don't have an exact sense of how many people are included
in this group as it can depend on how you define a disability but the CDC estimates that 61 million
Americans have a disability that affects major life functions and the advocacy group disabled
World estimates about 1 in 10 Americans have an invisible disability if you have a disability
visible or not you do have some protections the Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers
and many public spaces to provide you with reasonable accommodations but it's not always that
simple LINDA FISK: fear is the major reason why people with disabilities invisible or otherwise
don't disclose them those who are already employed may be afraid of opening themselves up to any kind
discrimination but on the other hand some people don't want to be seen for their disability which
they may consider to be a minor part of their life so they don't want to disclose that they don't
want to be identified as someone who is disabled or has a disability CHRISTIAN BRYANT:Linda Fisk is
the founder of the leadership training program LeadHERship Global she's pushed for companies
to adjust their approaches to make them more inclusive for people with disabilities she's also
experienced some of this firsthand while dealing with her own invisible disabilities which include
diabetes and hearing loss Linda says even beyond the legal requirements there is more companies
can do to accommodate workers with disabilities LINDA FISK: as an employer you also can give
them a safe place a designated safe place to have conversation and to receive support and to receive
access to company resources and that brings me to the last point which is your company can
offer support for employees with especially with invisible disabilities by making sure that mental
health coverage is included in your company's insurance plan CHRISTIAN BRYANT: the health
research nonprofit KFF found that roughly half of all firms provide employer-based Health Care
coverage that usually includes Mental Health Care making things more accommodating can be
beneficial to the bottom line a 2018 study by the consulting firm Accenture found that companies
they dubbed disability inclusion Champions brought in 28 percent more Revenue but at least one major
accommodation for workers with disabilities remote work is on the decline in 2022 LinkedIn
data revealed a pretty significant drop in the percentage of job opportunities offering remote
work from 20 in February down to 14 in September if you don't have a disability and don't know
someone first hand with one representations in pop culture might be some of the main depictions you
see but it turns out there aren't a whole lot of examples of people with disabilities especially
when it comes to Invisible disabilities like chronic pain KARIM MUKHIDA: we didn't find there
were really that many so we searched through you know hundreds of movies and although there's there
are a lot of movies that will depict acute pain so pain due to surgery or trauma or some violent
act in terms of movies that depict patients or characters that have chronic pain there were
very few CHRISTIAN BRYANT: but that oversight isn't stopped some Advocates from making sure
that disabilities of all forms are presented with sensitivity and accuracy on screen one person who
has dedicated their work to doing exactly that joins us now Lauren Appelbaum is senior vice
president for communications and entertainment and news media at RespectAbility they're a non-profit
working to change how Society views and values people with disabilities Lauren thank you so
much for joining us LAUREN APPELBAUM: thank you so much for having me CHRISTIAN BRYANT: yeah without
a doubt you've worked with dozens of different Productions on their portrayal of characters with
disabilities what are some particularly important things a viewer should be looking out for when
it comes to how a show portrays someone with a disability LAUREN APPELBAUM: we often come across
some uh some some negative tropes that we try to avoid seeing on screen uh for example this idea
that someone who acquires a disability which is something that happened to me in my own personal
life the I idea that life may not be worth living after acquiring certain disabilities and that can
obviously have a very negative effect on people's lives when they acquire disability or when
um when other people learn that a friend of theirs acquired a disability there's another Trope that's
out there this idea called inspiration porn the idea that the disabled character exists only to
prop up the non-disabled mainly lead and basically show this non-disabled lead having some sort of
Act of humanity in the way that they interact with their disabled peer a lot of it goes back
to this idea of not giving disabled characters a 360 Personality yeah they might be they might
be disabled but might also you know be a parent or be a teacher or be a dancer or so many other
things in life that someone could be and having a disability is just one aspect of someone's
life CHRISTIAN BRYANT: can you give us some some examples maybe some particularly good examples of
this being well done in shows or movies that you can think of LAUREN APPELBAUM: there's
one show on Netflix um that I had the chance to work on I premiered in January 2020 called The
Healing Powers of Dude and basically was about this idea of the main character he himself had
really bad social anxiety and he therefore had been homeschooled for for a while and what this
show did is it kind of helped normalize the idea of having anxiety as a child because I
think a lot of times people think that only adults have anxiety but it very much exists
among people of all ages and what I love about this show is that one of his best friends was
Amara played by Sophie Kim a middle schooler who um is an actress with muscular dystrophy
and uses a power wheelchair so what was really nice is you were able to see in this show so both
um both a non-visible and a visible disability and those disabilities both being considered you know
equal in terms of disability CHRISTIAN BRYANT: something that we've kind of touched on before
Hollywood is full of people who have disabilities especially invisible ones millions of people live
with invisible disabilities so why do you think it has taken such a long time for them to even be
shown in pop culture and to be shown accurately LAUREN APPELBAUM: I think there are a few things
one is when you have a non-visible disability you may choose to not share it you may share choose to
not be public about it because unfortunately there is a stigma that exists out there when I acquired
my disability people came to me and said oh how are you still going to be a mom and work and all
these things and I'm like I'm just going to figure it out and yeah I had to learn how to do some
things differently but I'm still able to succeed in all of these areas just doing it maybe in a
slightly different way than I had before but what happens is is a lot of times people are really
just terrified of disclosing their disability because when they do it's quite possible that
some people will assume that they are less capable without having disabled people behind the camera
as writers in casting as directors we're not going to get the stories that we deserve to see on
screen we need to have disabled folks behind the camera working to be able to create these stories
from their lived experience CHRISTIAN BRYANT: Lauren Appelbaum is senior vice president for
communications and entertainment and news media at RespectAbility Lauren thank you so much for
joining us LAUREN APPELBAUM: it was my pleasure thank you so much CHRISTIAN BRYANT: we're glad
Lauren could take some time to chat with us about some of this it's worth noting that RespectAbility
isn't alone in this project there's also groups like Hollywood health and Society a project from
the University of Southern California which offers writers and creative decision makers
resources to make sure they're telling the story of disability accurately KATE LANGRALL FOLB: so
we make a point of of encouraging writers to work with us our services are free we don't
take a credit on the show we're purely in the interest of Public Health and and and it behooves
um shows to get it right because audiences are smart