silversarcasm:

its so important to have disabled presence in children’s media, disabled kids grow up with really harmful messages about being burdens, ugly and unwanted and that needs to be challenged, we need to be showing disabled kids that they’re valued and amazing

like I remember a few years ago here in the UK, there was a disabled woman, Cerrie Burnell, who’s right arm ends a little past her elbow, who did some presenting on kids tv and parents wrote in and complained about her and said she was scary for children and shouldn’t be there because she was disabled

children are seen as being needed to be sheltered from the ~terrifying~ and ~horrifying~ reality of disabled people and that really hurts disabled kids and also massively contributes to adults hating and fearing disabled people since that’s what they were taught to do as kids

whether it’s disabled presenters or disabled characters, children’s media has to do more to acknowledge and celebrate disabled people