This year, for the first time ever, I was eager to watch the Emmy Awards ceremony. I didn’t know or care who was nominated or who won. But I was interested because James LeBrecht, a guy who uses a wheelchair, gave the event’s producers a real hard time for not making the stage truly wheelchair accessible. LeBrecht co-directed the film Crip Camp, which was nominated for an Oscar this year for “Best Documentary Feature.”
This disregard for the ADA was particularly egregious because this year’s Emmy ceremony was held in a makeshift venue constructed to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19.
You know how those ceremonies go. The big dramatic moment is when the winner is announced and that person makes the triumphant walk to the stage to accept their award and deliver their speech. That walk always includes scaling some stairs.
Early in September, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund sent a letter to the producers of the Emmy Awards on LeBrecht’s behalf, informing them that not having a ramp leading from the audience area to the stage violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The letter said that when LeBrecht complained to the producers this spring, he was told that anyone who couldn’t climb stairs could access the stage from backstage. Or a microphone could be brought into the audience area to any award winner who wished to speak. But, the letter noted, “neither approach complies with the ADA, and each conveys disrespect and exclusion. Separate is never equal.”
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James LeBrecht
This disregard for the ADA was particularly egregious, the letter continued, because this year’s Emmy ceremony was held in a makeshift venue constructed just for the event to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19.
I was delighted to hear that LeBrecht was making a big deal about this. Stage access is a requirement of the ADA that I’ve seen routinely ignored.
The ADA was signed into law thirty-one years ago, and since then I’ve been to a lot of performance venues with newly constructed stages that are only accessible by stairs. This burns me up because it relegates disabled people to being mere spectators. The notion that we would have anything important enough to say for us to be stage worthy is seen as too silly to be taken seriously. Thus, a ramp to the stage, especially one that’s in plain sight, is rejected as a superfluous, burdensome eyesore.
Shortly after the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund’s letter was sent, LeBrecht reported that the producers assured him that the stage would indeed include a ramp from the audience as part of the stage design. This would be a great development because the millions of people watching the broadcast would see the ramp, which could go a long way toward stomping out the belief that disabled people don’t belong on life’s stages.
But when the broadcast aired on September 19, there was no obvious ramp. There was a discreet ramp off to the side, but it was hardly noticeable. In an interview with Variety, LeBrecht said he was “furious,” noting that the point of having an obvious ramp was for the producers “to show that we want people with disabilities to participate.”
Yep, the producers had a golden opportunity to truly celebrate the ADA and all that it stands for. But their grudging, minimalist compliance reinforced the message that if you can’t climb stairs, you don’t belong on stage.