The Fight for Disability Rights Continues: A Conversation with Filmmaker Alice Elliott and Activist Diana Braun

Wednesday, Oct 12, 2022

Three woman, one of whom is in a wheelchair, talk amongst themselves.

(L-R) Diana Braun, Kathy Conour, and Alice Elliott

It’s been more than three decades since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed into law, an indispensable civil rights triumph that afforded people with disabilities further protection against discrimination and introduced reasonable accommodations. In recent years, continued progress has turned up in small but detectable ways: the expanded use of closed captions and sign language interpreters, strengthened education and awareness programs, and growing employment numbers among people with disabilities.

But headway has sometimes waned. The battle to close or remediate state-run institutions is an ongoing one, and there remains a sense that disability rights have not penetrated the public consciousness with the same force as other social issues.

Filmmaker and Distinguished Teacher Alice Elliott’s (Kanbar Institute, Undergraduate Film & Television) documentary work has often challenged the public’s perception of ability and shed light on the fight for independent rights in the disabled community. Her debut film, The Collector of Bedford Street, followed her neighbor Larry Selman, a community activist and fundraiser who had an intellectual disability. Elliott’s 2008 follow-up, the PBS award-winning Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy, tracked the titular duo’s journey from their home in Springfield, Ill, to Washington, D.C, to advocate for independent lives. To this day Diana Braun, a subject of Elliott’s film who has Down syndrome, is among the country’s most remarkable advocates with disabilities.

October is recognized as National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which “celebrates the contributions of America’s workers with disabilities past and present and showcases supportive, inclusive employment policies and practices.” In honor of this moment, we’ve reconnected with Alice Elliott—and also heard from disabled rights activist Diana Braun—to assess the state of disability rights in America and how the movement can be infused with new vigor.

Alice, how did your relationships with Diana and Kathy inform your advocacy work in the disabled community?

Alice Elliott: I had previously spent time with Larry Selman, who was the subject of one of the first films I made, The Collector of Bedford Street. Larry had an intellectual disability and I had spent a lot of time with him. When I got to know Diana and Kathy, I was more comfortable with Diana because I had spent time around people with intellectual disabilities. But spending time around Kathy, who had cerebral palsy, helped me to feel more comfortable around people with physical disabilities. That was the big change for me—to just have that totally normalized. I wish everybody could have that experience.

[When screening the film], some people would have a very strong reaction to Kathy and Diana. I was at a film festival and I was waiting in the lobby until the film was over because I'd seen it so many times. This man came out, and he started to leave, and I don't know why but I just said, “Oh, did you not like the film?” He said, “Oh, I couldn't watch it.” And so I thought, wow, he really had a big reaction to seeing somebody with a disability on the screen. I hoped that the film would normalize that—that it would help you stop looking at the other, and see parts of yourself and parts of your own relationships with people.

What did you make of that kind of visceral response?

Alice Elliott: I think all of us have some discomfort with the unfamiliar. This goes for race, it goes for class, it goes for disability. And so I think this is why it's really so important to have people with disabilities included in everything—nothing about us without us.

Diana, you and Kathy had a wonderfully symbiotic relationship. What kinds of support did you provide her on the day-to-day?

Diana Braun: I had been Kathy’s personal assistant for all those years—42 years. We did a lot of things together. [For example], she would go to college, and I would take her to her classes and sometimes I would join her in the classroom. My job was to get her there, and then she would have a tutor that would help her.

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What do you consider the current priority for disability rights advocates?

Diana Braun: Well, we need to get people out of these state institutions. We still have a lot more here [in Illinois], but we don’t know yet how the governor is going to do it.

For each of you, what should people know to better understand the challenges facing the disabled community?

Diana Braun: We don’t always need help, but when we do it’s [best to] ask first. Some people assume we need help when we don’t. I will tell you if I need help with something.

Alice Elliott: In this country people with disabilities are forced into low-wage jobs. They're forced into no education. They're isolated, they're abandoned, and they're institutionalized… The work is still being done. But there has been this [emerging] openness, and this discovery and this awareness. 

More often than not, the wheels of progress turn slowly. Do you feel encouraged by the current state of equity and awareness around disability rights?

Alice Elliott: I do, very recently, with the Black Lives Matters protests. That activism was given center stage, and what I was particularly happy to see was that it's not just an activism around race, but it's around social justice. What’s been so heartening to see is the inclusion of people with disabilities. The Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act were passed in the ‘60s and people with disabilities were once again told to stand at the back of the line. We didn't get ADA until 1990.

This has always been the case in this country. We can focus on one thing at a time. We're going to focus on women getting the vote, but we're not going to include Black women. And what's been so exciting in the film world is to see the understanding of the need for captioning. I just went to Getting Real, the International Documentary Association Conference, and they had people signing, and you could ask for accommodations, and they were really being attentive to that.

How can art help escalate awareness and expedite change?

Alice Elliott: For me, the most empowering thing is that I used to say I make films about people with disabilities because they were people who didn't have a voice. But now we're seeing a whole generation of filmmakers with disabilities, and it's so exciting because the films are from a totally different perspective. As empathic or empathetic as I might be, I can never tell the whole story, because it hasn't been my lived experience.

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