Upon becoming the United Kingdom’s official Paralympic broadcaster for 2012, Channel 4 set out with the explicit intention to “create a nation at ease with disability” according to their Disability Executive, Alison Walsh. They pursued this through a) unprecedented exposure of para sport, including over nine hours a day of live sport, plus extensive build-up programmes, b) a ‘no-holds-barred approach to the portrayal of disabled people’ (Walsh, 2015, p. 49) c) marketing Paralympians to the British public with an emphasis on athlete backstories in order to familiarize audiences with GB para-athletes, and d) developing disabled talent both on screen and in production. All of these practices formed a significant shift from those of the former Paralympic broadcaster, the BBC, and were explicitly aimed at challenging existing media stereotypes (see Pullen, et al., s, 2018).

In this presentation I will present the findings of an AHRC-funded project that examined the intentions and practices of Channel 4’s broadcasting of the Rio 2016 Paralympics; the influence of this on the content of Paralympic coverage and mediated forms of disability representation; and the wider impact on public attitudes toward disability. I will demonstrate the extent to which socially progressive forms of disability representation can and do effect positive social change with respect to disability awareness. I will argue that both the quality and quantity of Paralympic coverage by C4 has been an important vehicle in progressive forms of disability representation marked by greater inclusion, education, and visibility of disability. At the same time, I highlight some of the complexities and contradictions in the Paralympic legacy with respect to issues of inclusion and exclusion, empowerment and disempowerment, and forms of marginalisation.