Comments on: Hollywood performers unveil disability rights initiative http://www.patriciaebauer.com/2008/10/06/hollywood-disability-rights-3394/ Disability News | PatriciaEBauer.com Wed, 24 Nov 2010 22:50:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Ruthee Goldkorn http://www.patriciaebauer.com/2008/10/06/hollywood-disability-rights-3394/comment-page-1/#comment-3378 Ruthee Goldkorn Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:40:32 +0000 http://www.patriciaebauer.com/?p=3394#comment-3378 Would be actors with disAbility need to start showing up in droves at casting calls and actors workshops and extra casting offices, be turned away or be forced to accept non compliant facilities and file employent discrimination complaints. That's how would be actors with disAbility can and should get involved. As should current actors with disAbility. This so called initiative comes on the heels of an EEOC complaint and ongoing investigation. These organizations and the studios are caught with their pants down and they know it. This initiative lacks any enforcement, lacks any sembelence of an ADA Coordinator for each and every set and relies on a feel good about me philosophy that is as insulting as it is laughable. This so called initiative will do absolutely zero to make studios and sets physically accessible as there is no mechanism to do so. Studios have no intention of making their physical plants ADA Title III compliant. The only ADA Coordinator any studio has is in HR and actors do not deal with HR. Secretaries do. And only when a few hundred secretaries with disAbility can't get in, then maybe something will happen. No casting company has an ADA Coordinator and there is no mandate to force them to hire one. We are are violated and we will continue to be so. We have been booted off too many inaccessible sets with the magic words "we don't/can't accommodate people like you" or been relegated to a porta potty in an adjacent parking lot when everyone else gets a real bathroom with indoor plumbing! The number of similar stories is mind numbing. This initiative is a sham and needs to be exposed as such. Unless more actors with disAbility go to EEOC and DOJ, nothing will happen but more smoke screens. Ruthee Goldkorn Moreno Valley, California <em>Editor's note: Read more about Ruthee Goldkorn <a href="http://www.pe.com/localnews/riverside/stories/PE_News_Local_D_wheel29.25e65dd.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</em> Would be actors with disAbility need to start showing up in droves at casting calls and actors workshops and extra casting offices, be turned away or be forced to accept non compliant facilities and file employent discrimination complaints. That’s how would be actors with disAbility can and should get involved. As should current actors with disAbility.

This so called initiative comes on the heels of an EEOC complaint and ongoing investigation. These organizations and the studios are caught with their pants down and they know it. This initiative lacks any enforcement, lacks any sembelence of an ADA Coordinator for each and every set and relies on a feel good about me philosophy that is as insulting as it is laughable.

This so called initiative will do absolutely zero to make studios and sets physically accessible as there is no mechanism to do so. Studios have no intention of making their physical plants ADA Title III compliant. The only ADA Coordinator any studio has is in HR and actors do not deal with HR. Secretaries do. And only when a few hundred secretaries with disAbility can’t get in, then maybe something will happen. No casting company has an ADA Coordinator and there is no mandate to force them to hire one.

We are are violated and we will continue to be so. We have been booted off too many inaccessible sets with the magic words “we don’t/can’t accommodate people like you” or been relegated to a porta potty in an adjacent parking lot when everyone else gets a real bathroom with indoor plumbing!

The number of similar stories is mind numbing.

This initiative is a sham and needs to be exposed as such. Unless more actors with disAbility go to EEOC and DOJ, nothing will happen but more smoke screens.

Ruthee Goldkorn
Moreno Valley, California

Editor’s note: Read more about Ruthee Goldkorn here.

]]> By: Ira http://www.patriciaebauer.com/2008/10/06/hollywood-disability-rights-3394/comment-page-1/#comment-2854 Ira Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:40:04 +0000 http://www.patriciaebauer.com/?p=3394#comment-2854 How can would-be disabled actors get involved? How can would-be disabled actors get involved?

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