Tracking Disability Inclusion on TV
Jennifer Maas at Nielsen:
Nielsen’s TV content analysis company Gracenote will begin tracking on-screen disability representation as part of its inclusion data, which currently covers talent gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
“As of September 2022, there were 923,229 total television program titles available to audiences, up 43% since the third quarter of 2019,” per Gracenote. “And while the volume of disability-inclusive content has increased over time, progress is slow, especially when compared to the increase in available programming generally. According to Nielsen Gracenote Inclusion Analytics, disability inclusion in video content peaked in 2019, when 518 productions were released featuring people with disabilities. But this number is just a drop in the bucket when it comes to total content production. As of December this year 7,556 video titles included disability thematic attributes, but that represents just 4.1% of the 183,089 total titles with descriptor metadata released during the same period
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The company will now begin tracking these disability-representation points in its Inclusion Analytics:
- Neurodivergence
- Intellectual/Developmental
- Visual
- Hearing
- Physical
- Mental Health
