ALISON Walsh has been appointed the BBC’s new head of disability, writes JOHN PRING.
Walsh, who previously championed disability at Channel 4, will work across the BBC to improve programming, commissioning and portrayal of disabled people.
She led the search for disabled presenter talent for the Channel 4’s London 2012 Paralympics coverage, and helped write the bids that won the broadcaster the rights to broadcast those games and Rio 2016.
But her time at Channel 4 was not without controversy.
In December 2010, she defended Channel 4’s decision to allow comedian Frankie Boyle to tell offensive, disablist “jokes” about the son of model Katie Price on his show.
And earlier that year, she had also defended the channel’s decisions to use the term “freak of nature” in trailers publicising a documentary on Paralympic athletes, and to call a new series in which people with facial disfigurements shared a house with beauty-obsessed people “Beauty and the Beast”.
Walsh said that her BBC appointment was “a dream role”, and added: “Disability is normal for so many of us – part of our lives, directly or indirectly.
“The BBC, perhaps more than any other broadcaster, needs to reflect that normality and to nurture the best of the nation’s disabled talent.
“We’ve seen real progress in disability portrayal in recent years, but that feels like just the warm-up.
“I’m hugely looking forward to working with teams across the BBC, building on the great work they are already doing and helping create the next big breakthroughs.”
BBC director general Tony Hall wants the BBC to quadruple on-screen representation of disabled people by 2017, and to increase disabled staff and leadership in the organisation to over 5% by 2017.
