The 2016 Paralympics in Rio may feature more disabled athletes than ever before, but it’s not just on the field or in the pool that the Games are making their mark.
Channel 4 says its 11-day coverage of the 15th Paralympic Games will be produced by the largest group of disabled people, both on and off screen, ever assembled. Of the 36 presenters on the programme, 21 are disabled – about 58%.
The most globally recognisable face in the lineup is RJ Mitte, the actor with cerebral palsy who played Walt Jr, the son of the science teacher turned drug dealer, Walter White, in Breaking Bad.
“It’s important to show people with disabilities on screen,” Mitte said. “This isn’t just a celebration of disability. This is what we can do when we are limited [by] things that do confine us, do sometimes control and dictate who we are.
“This is showing us overcoming that and using all the abilities we have. The Paralympics shows what we are willing do to.”
The opening ceremony on Wednesday evening was fronted by the BBC security correspondent, Frank Gardner, who uses a wheelchair after being shot in Saudi Arabia a decade ago, alongside presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
On Thursday morning the first block of programming was hosted by presenter and former wheelchair basketball player Ade Adepitan and the ex-royal marine Arthur Williams.
Other presenters include JJ Chalmers, another former marine, as well as both current and former Paralympians who will work with able-bodied stars such as Clare Balding, who fronts the evening highlights show.
Although viewing figures for the Paralympic opening ceremony were down on 2012, they have held up better than figures for the main games on the BBC. More than 2 million tuned into Wednesday night’s broadcast, about a quarter of 2012’s audience. In contrast, last month’s Olympics opening ceremony could barely manage more than a 10th of its 2012 audience, and at a peak of 3.8 million viewers didn’t hugely outpace Wednesday night’s event.
Channel 4’s head of events and sport, Ed Havard, said the broadcaster was determined to build on the success of 2012, where about half of those presenting were disabled.
“We made a really significant breakthrough in 2012 by having prominent disabled talent on screen. We made a decision that in 2016 we needed to take it to the next level. Making that commitment to make sure we had the largest collection of disabled on-screen talent in history was a massive dialling-up.”
A big change, said Havard, was that while in 2012 disabled presenters were paired with able-bodied peers, this year large chunks of Channel 4’s coverage is fronted by teams of entirely disabled stars.
It’s not just in front of the camera that disabled people are becoming more involved. Sunset and Vine, the independent production company producing the coverage for the channel, has 20 disabled staff on the production team in Rio, about 15% of the total of 131.
Of those 20 staff members, 17 came through Channel 4’s Rio production trainee scheme. One of them is Dan Goulding, who has cerebral palsy affecting his lower body movement.
“I honestly can’t believe I’m here in Rio working on the Paralympics,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to work on massive sporting events so to be actually doing that so early in my career is a little bit surreal.”
Goulding has had his contract as broadcasting assistant at BBC sport news extended and is returning there after the Games.
Havard said one of the most encouraging things about this year has been the level of support the scheme has received across the industry, with everyone from the BBC to small independents providing on-the-job training for disabled production staff.
Able-bodied presenters from Channel 4 and at other broadcasters have also mentored those appearing on screen.
Havard insisted the legacy of hosting the Paralympics in London four years ago has permeated the rest of the channel, normalising disability. He pointed to the comedy show The Last Leg, which started during the 2012 Games before going weekly, and returns to broadcast nightly from Rio.
Although research by the disability charity Scope published last month found that 77% of disabled people thought the 2012 Paralympics had helped perceptions of people with disabilities, it also found that more than 80% of respondents still did not think they were well represented on TV or in the wider media.
However, another of the production trainees, Laurie Lawira, who moved to the UK from Australia last year after working in production in Sydney, was confident this year’s games could continue to help more people with disabilities get into TV.
“The industry already has the structures to be inclusive but it often lacks openly promoting and following through with opportunities. Schemes like the Channel 4 traineeship go a long way to address this and is a great step.
“If a manager who previously would not consider taking on a person with a disability has changed his or her attitude, this has made a long-term impact,” he said. “If disability moves from back of mind to front in all our daily attitudes – how we treat our colleagues who may be in a wheelchair, or visually impaired or have cerebral palsy – then we have made a long-term impact.”
Dan Goulding also said it was in the interests of the television industry to learn from and change in response to events like the Paralympics .
“The only way to help create more diverse content for the audience is to have a more diverse workforce,” he said. “So whether that’s people who are able-bodied or disabled, male or female, people from different backgrounds, it’s important everyone brings their individual ideas or fresh twists to current ideas and so allow us to create content to suit the audience.”
