As I reflect on the 18th annual ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York, held April 23–30 across all five boroughs, New Jersey, and online through May 3, what resonates most deeply for me is not one film, panel, or award.
It is the evolution.
For decades, colleagues and I have argued that disability, in all its kaleidoscopic complexity, merits more than the monochrome monotony of tragedy and heroism we’ve been subject to. Stories have a life beyond the screen. They overflow into workplaces, classrooms, funding decisions, and the public imagination.
What we show shapes understanding. What we miss is likely to expand existing gaps.
A film festival, at best, is a temporary civic space, a shared cultural experience that, if nurtured, can become a quiet form of repair.
In a blog post for the American Association of People with Disabilities, one of our newest partners, Naomi Hess, AAPD’s Editorial Manager, reflected on how rare and meaningful it was to be surrounded by so many disabled creatives at ReelAbilities.
Asked to elaborate, she explains the significance plainly.
“ReelAbilities Film Festival is a model for true disability integration that every part of life should strive to match,” Hess said. “Its films show how disability stories told with complexity, agency, and access can influence policy by showing what becomes possible when disabled people lead.”
That rarity should bother us.
Disabled artists, critics, programmers, writers, and audiences should not have to wait for one annual festival to feel what a room built with us in mind can feel like. And when it happens, you notice the shift: disabled people talking craft, rather than constraints. Filmmakers pitching projects. Actors imagining new possibilities. Audiences embracing stories they did not know they needed.
At the ReelAbilities Industry Summit, I moderated “The Impact Report,” a panel on the latest research, trends, gaps, and opportunities shaping disability inclusion and representation in entertainment. A common refrain was the need for better data to support better representation in front of and behind the camera: leadership, decision-making, programming, and practice.
“The stories we tell shape public perception, but so do the stories that aren’t told,” said Emily Ladau, Disability Inclusion Strategist at Easterseals Southern California, who presented on the panel. “When the full depth and breadth of disability experience is missed, understanding is absent too. That is why disability inclusion must be supported as a movement beyond this moment.”
In other words, progress is a practice.
A moment gets applause. A movement builds infrastructure.
“The data on the status of disability inclusion in entertainment was shocking,” shared Annika Young, Digital Comms & Media Coordinator, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, and a first-time ReelAbilities Industry Summit participant. “Accessibility is infrastructure, ramps, captions, audio description, sensory accommodations, communication access, and the budgets and policies that actually back them up. Grateful to be in a room of people willing to name the gaps.”
That last phrase matters: Name the gaps.
But once we identify what’s lacking, we have to fill those gaps with policy, planning, budgets, sweat equity, and the creative ambition to transform them into artistic possibility.
Access is an invitation. But artistry is not a given. Nor is it mysterious or magical. It takes work.
Access sets the stage for participation. Participation becomes practice. Practice develops craft. Craft forges authorship, experimentation, risk, failure, revision, and growth. Without the tools of the trade, access can open the door and still leave disabled artists waiting.
Presence is better than absence, but without power it does not amount to much. Disabled filmmakers need cameras, crews, edit bays, writers’ rooms, funding, mentorship, criticism, distribution, and time.
Time to get better. Time to make mistakes. Time to build a body of work.
We talk a lot about representation and less about reckoning, a requirement for accountability. And accountability? That’s where repair begins.
Repair means showcasing stories we’ve been missing. It also asks why they were missing in the first place. Then taking concrete measures to broaden the frame. Celebrating stories that reflect the world more honestly but also imagine differently. To not only show what is, but also what has been hidden, and what has yet to be.
Audiences are eager. Artists are growing impatient.
What we see on screen depends so much on what we do not: budgets, leaders, team members, captioning, interpreters, audio description, rehearsal space, editing bays, funders, critics, and distributors who are excited to go where disabled artists lead.
That is the quiet architecture beneath the art.
The larger question is whether the systems still hidden from view will evolve as well, not only to welcome disabled creatives, but to support the artistry their work reveals and that repair requires.
Lawrence Carter-Long writes about words, meaning, and movies at the intersection of inspiration and perspiration. He is Director of Engagement for ReelAbilities International, which presents the annual ReelAbilities Film Festival and uses film year-round to advance disability inclusion, access, and cultural change on screen and off.
Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Able News at The Viscardi Center and/or The Viscardi Center.