Disability Justice Quotes

I think one in five Americans has a disability of some sort. That's 20% of the population, and yet we rarely ever see people with disabilities on-screen, and their stories and their resilience and their zest for life and their humor and their humanity.

Disability is as visual as race. If a wheelchair user can't play Beyonce, then Beyonce can't play a wheelchair user.

It's undeniable that what we are taught as a culture to believe about disability is at odds with traditional notions of masculinity.

We do need more deaf people in Hollywood. But I don't think that deaf people always have to play a deaf role. I think we can play different roles. We need to see more diversity period. More people of color. More disabled people. More gender diversity. All kinds of diversity.

The founding of Graeae by disabled actors was a huge political statement that you forgot at your peril.

It's really important to remember that disability is diversity, and that disabled actors and disabilities are something that is hugely under-represented in film.

Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.

The ADA prohibits discrimination and guarantees that people with disabilities receive the same opportunities as everyone else to participate in the mainstreams of American life, which includes participating in government programs and services.

I got nominated for a Tony, which was a complete surprise. It was an experience that I will always cherish.

You're not disabled unless you say 'I'm disabled.'

The whole community of people with disabilities was alive, politically alive. I give Justin Dart credit for that. He traveled to every state in the country. He really made people with disabilities understand that they had some political power.

I don't generally talk about medical terms when I discuss my position as a disabled person. I take a social rather than medical approach to disability, and so long Latin names for congenital conditions are not relevant.

People with disabilities are simply part of diverse communities in the U.S.

I identify very proudly as a disabled woman. I identify with the crip community. I didn't invent the word 'crip'. It's a political ideology I came to in my late teens and early 20s.

Respectfully, the civil rights movement for people with disabilities is modeled on the African American civil rights movement. I'm old enough to remember 1964. I was a junior in high school.

It became very clear to me that Yooralla was not as interested in media coverage that explored issues faced by people with disability as it was in giving a pat on the back to journalists who maintained the status quo by giving readers the warm and fuzzies over their morning paper.

I'm not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me. You can't possibly speak for a diverse group of people. I don't know what it's like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy.

I use the term 'disabled people' quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.

Physical access is one of the very first issues disability rights activists of the 1960s and '70s fought for.

I do not identify as a person with a disability. I'm a disabled person. And I'll be a monkey's disabled uncle if I'm going to apologise for that.