Thirty years of (in)visible disability in Australian television: Home and Away’s experiments with representation and inclusion

Abstract

Disability is an increasingly dominant aspect of television representation, audiences, industries and policy internationally and offers many insights into issues of exclusion and inclusion. In this article, we reflect upon disability and the histories of Australian television through a case study of a much loved and long-running soap – Home and Away. In particular, we explore issues of inclusion via an analysis of the representation of overlooked disabilities, such as mental health, chronic illness and other ‘invisible’ disabilities, contrasting a key moment in the programme in the late 1990s with developments in the 2002–2019 period.