2012 Media Access Awards Celebrate Disability Awareness and Inclusion in Media and Entertainment

Late Night Funny Man Jimmy Kimmel to Host Awards Reception
with Jane Lynch, Helen Hunt, and many more on hand

Media Acc

Los Angeles, CA (September 11, 2012) – The 2012 Media Access Awards will be held on October 10, 2012, from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. with a breakfast and an awards ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. This annual event honors individuals in the entertainment and broadcast industries for their efforts in promoting awareness of the disability experience, accessibility for people with disabilities, and the accurate depiction of characters with disabilities. Emceed by Emmy-winner Jimmy Kimmel (Jimmy Kimmel Live), coming off the heels of hosting this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards, honorees of the 2012 Media Access Awards will include television writer-producer tour-de-force Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy, and Lauren Potter, star of FOX’s hit comedy, Glee.  Among the presenters will be Emmy winner Jane Lynch (Glee), Oscar winner Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets, Mad About You), Oscar nominee John Hawkes (The Sessions,Winter’s Bone), RJ Mitte (Breaking Bad), the cast of Sundance Channel‘s Push Girls, and more.

Read more of the SAG-AFTRA ONE UNION article HERE.

The Latest TV Trend: Autism

I know plenty about people on the autism spectrum. Communication and social skills present them with considerable challenges. They attach great importance to predictability and routine. They have highly specific tastes and preferences and become intractable when these are not met. They have difficulty understanding and processing human emotion, including their own. All of them are male, and all but one of them are young. And they have the ability to perform superhuman feats of memory and mathematics. I know all this, of course, only from popular culture. So maybe I don’t know as much as I think I do.

Given the current prevalence of autism in the real world it’s not surprising to see it reflected in current entertainment. In fact, one might go so far as to say that autism is “hot” right now. Last month, Fox previewed a new series, Touch, about a seemingly uncommunicative boy; the dramatis personae of SyFy’s Alphas include a character who self-identifies as autistic; and the title character of BBC’s popular series Sherlock displays the emotional detachment often associated with those on the spectrum. These characters have another trait in common: they are, effectively, superhuman. Sherlock Holmes of course possesses those famous powers of deduction; Alphas’s Gary can pull and interpret electromagnetic signals directly from the air; and Jake from Touch, while communicating solely in number clues, has a seemingly divine ability to trace and even manipulate the invisible patterns of causality that supposedly connect us all (the show’s utterly fanciful premise is beside the point).



Read more of Jeff Alexander's Time article HERE.