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Marlee Matlin
Born
Marlee Matlin, the first Deaf performer to win an Academy Award, for Children of a Lesser God in 1987, testified before Congress in support of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990, which required new American televisions to display closed captions. That law changed daily life for millions of Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. Decades later she pushed for Deaf actors to play the Deaf family in CODA.
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Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder, blind since infancy, was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 2009 with a focus on disability, and lobbied for the Marrakesh Treaty of 2013, which makes it easier to produce and share books in braille and other accessible formats across borders. At the 2016 Grammys he read the winner from a braille card and called for everything to be accessible to everyone. His advocacy is specific, persistent and tied to real legislation.
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Rose Ayling-Ellis
Born
Rose Ayling-Ellis, the first Deaf contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, won it in 2021 with Giovanni Pernice, and their routine with a moment of complete silence became one of the show's most celebrated. Her profile helped the campaign behind the British Sign Language Act 2022, which recognised BSL as a language of Great Britain, and she presented a BBC documentary on Deaf education. On stage she has played Celia in As You Like It with BSL woven into the production.
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Troy Kotsur
Born
Troy Kotsur spent years with Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles, which stages productions in American Sign Language and spoken English simultaneously, before CODA made him the first Deaf man to win an acting Oscar in 2022. He gave his acceptance speech in ASL. His career shows how a Deaf-led company can train performers who then change mainstream casting.
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Ali Stroker
Born
Ali Stroker became the first wheelchair user to perform on Broadway in Deaf West's 2015 revival of Spring Awakening, and the first to win a Tony, for Oklahoma! in 2019. She speaks often about the inaccessible backstage spaces she has had to navigate and has pushed theatres to fix them. Her Tony speech was dedicated to every child with a disability waiting to see themselves represented.
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Nyle DiMarco
Born
Nyle DiMarco won America's Next Top Model in 2015 and Dancing with the Stars in 2016, then used the attention to start the Nyle DiMarco Foundation, which campaigns for Deaf children to have early access to sign language. He executive-produced the Netflix series Deaf U, made with Deaf students at Gallaudet University, and the documentary Audible. His focus on language deprivation gives his advocacy a precise target.
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Evelyn Glennie
Born
Evelyn Glennie, profoundly deaf since the age of twelve, became the world's first full-time solo percussionist and often performs barefoot to feel vibrations through the floor. She has written and spoken widely about how deaf people experience sound, and her Teach the World to Listen work promotes music education built around feeling and listening rather than hearing alone. She played at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.
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Warwick Davis
Born
Warwick Davis co-founded Willow Management in 1995, a talent agency representing short actors, and in 2012 co-founded the charity Little People UK with his wife, Samantha, to support people with dwarfism and their families. The agency was a practical answer to typecasting, finding work beyond fantasy roles. He also campaigns against the use of dwarfism as a punchline.
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Maysoon Zayid
Maysoon Zayid, a comedian with cerebral palsy, gave one of the most-watched TED talks of 2014, using sharp jokes to argue that disabled people are missing from screen stories. She co-founded the New York Arab American Comedy Festival in 2003 and has consulted on disabled representation in television. Her work makes the case for access to the writers' room as well as to the stage.
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Rosie Jones
Born
Rosie Jones, a comedian with cerebral palsy, has made accessibility a running thread of her television work, most directly in her Channel 4 travel series Trip Hazard, which tests how easy Britain's attractions really are for disabled visitors. She has also reported for Channel 4's Paralympics coverage. Her approach is to let the humour expose the barriers rather than lecture about them.
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Adam Pearson (actor)
Born
Adam Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis, starred opposite Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin and with Sebastian Stan in A Different Man (2024), a film that wrestles directly with how disfigurement is cast and portrayed. Off screen he has presented BBC documentaries on disability hate crime and campaigns with the charity Changing Faces. He insists on parts that let disfigured actors play complicated people.
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RJ Mitte
RJ Mitte, who had cerebral palsy, played Walter White Jr. in Breaking Bad, a disabled character whose disability was part of his life rather than his storyline. He used the role to work as an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children's and to argue in industry forums for more disabled actors and crew. He died in October 2026.
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Selma Blair
Born
Selma Blair announced her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2018 and appeared on the red carpet with a walking cane soon after, a deliberately public choice. Her documentary Introducing, Selma Blair (2021) follows her through treatment, and her appearance on Dancing with the Stars in 2022 showed adapted choreography on prime-time television. She has also championed adaptive fashion designed for disabled bodies.
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Christopher Reeve
Born
Christopher Reeve was paralysed in a riding accident in 1995 and spent the rest of his life campaigning, through what is now the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. Alongside research funding, the foundation runs a Paralysis Resource Center and gives quality-of-life grants to community projects such as accessible playgrounds and adaptive sport. He died in 2004; the foundation remains one of the largest of its kind.
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