The BBC has pledged a £100m budget to increasing diversity on TV over a three year period from April 2021.
The BBC has set itself a mandatory target - 20% of off-screen talent must come from under-represented groups.
The announcement follows the appointment of June Sarpong as the BBC's director of creative diversity last October, who pledged to ensure 50% of on-air roles will go to women by 2020, with targets of 15% for black, Asian and minority ethnic groups [BAME], 8% for disabled people and 8% for LGBTQ staff.
DR UK has been working with the BBC’s 50:50 equality project through the Media Trust, Reframing Disability in the Media project, which has sought to engage with leading print, broadcast and digital media channels to better reflect the diversity in society.
DR UK’s Fazilet Hadi said: “This is a good first step. Disabled people should be visible on primetime as much as through specialist channels such as the BBC’s Ouch! output.
“We want to see proportional representation, akin to that which women, and the BAME and LGBTQ groups have received. The BBC has set more representative targets of 15% for the BAME community, which makes up around 14% of our population, 8% for the LGBTQ community, which makes up nearly 7% of our population, and only 8% for disabled people, which makes up almost 21% of our population. We would call on the BBC to explain why it has put in place such an unambitious figure for disabled people.”