If you’ve ever spent your morning commute daydreaming about starting afresh with your career, this feature is for you.
Each Monday, we speak to someone from a different profession to discover what it’s really like. This week we chat to wheelchair user Julie Fernandez, an access coordinator and former actress best known for playing Brenda in The Office and Vanessa Lockhead in the ’90s soap Eldorado.
Rates vary according to budget… The Casarotto access team I co-run with my business partner Sara Johnson has set guidance of no less than £350 per day for unscripted and it ranges from £350-£900 for a drama depending on their budget. They work as freelance consultants and we ask for a minimum of five days (where there is no connection to disability in the crew or content). We are worth the money and always aiming to challenge the disability pay gap and ensure disabled-led expertise is well paid.
My days are spent… carrying out one-to-one meetings to learn what a cast or crew member’s access requirements are; advising them and production on appropriate adjustments; working with the locations team on how to make sets and venues accessible; advising the production secretary on what accessible travel and accommodation really looks like. Every day is different and I love it.
My favourite regular job is on… Silent Witness, who continue to work hard to embed access-first thinking across every process on and off-screen.
I love my job but… it’s hard when you feel like a tick box or when people don’t value your advice. It’s frustrating when productions don’t embrace all they can to improve accessibility, and instead grudgingly use us to help them put in ramps for that one disabled actor they have hired. Thankfully, that’s not as common nowadays.
I had to really fight for whatever I needed on Eldorado… when I was flown to Spain and expected to just get on with it. Thirty-five years on I can’t believe I’m still having the same conversations about ramps and toilets. The industry has changed considerably for the better since I was an actor but it’s nowhere near where it should be.
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The UK is leading in making the TV industry more inclusive… due to the pan-industry response called for by [playwright] Jack Thorne in his 2021 MacTaggart lecture. While things are better than I could have imagined, until we mandate the role on every show, the progress will continue to crawl along. Having more disabled leaders and managers bringing a trickle down effect is also something that needs to happen.
The most common barrier is… small mindedness, and that people think they are doing disabled people a favour by hiring them, rather than the other way round.
Sadly, buildings are still inaccessible… Very few people really understand or bother to learn about how to prepare to evacuate disabled clients, customers, or employees. We are far off genuine equity, but I remain hopeful. Working on The Office, my boss [Ash Atalla] was a wheelchair user, which did mean that the crew had more of an idea how to accommodate some of my own access requirements.
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I hope my role in The Office was very important… as it is still what people remember me for, and Ricky and Steve did a great job of using comedy to show something that continues to be an issue, without the issue being the point of the moment. Young people and those who are marginalised want to see themselves on TV and film, want to know that that world is a place for them.
We advise rather than get given a budget… We almost always make it known that it costs 30% more to retrofit accessibility, whereas embedding it allows you to achieve something cost-neutral.
Most people think they don’t know anyone who is deaf, blind, disabled, or neurodivergent, but… one in five live with a health condition or disability and the number of neurodivergent people being diagnosed is going to throw that statistic out quite soon. And yet town planning, public transport, buildings, businesses, goods and services are still not assuming they can make money from this huge chunk of society. The purple pound is worth £446bn.
No TV show or film has got accessibility 100% right but… the ones that keep trying are my favourites. Those who return to hiring an AC or tell their producers to hire one, or who use our consultancy across the board. Current shoutouts are STV, BBC, Pulse, 60Forty, New Pictures, Rockerdale, UKTV, Disney and Sky.
The biggest hurdles for disabled actors to get into the industry are… drama school places, inaccessible buildings, getting to auditions, and people seeing a place for disabled actors playing any role, regardless of their disability. Incidental casting of disabled actors is something that needs to be done more widely and regularly, and would help build careers.
More from this series:
Secrets of a cabbie
I’m a self-taught celebrity photographer
I’m a child psychiatrist
If I could create three laws to help people with access requirements, I would…
