Rosalie Wilkins in the House of Lords, where she joined the Labour benches in 1999
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Rosalie Wilkins in the House of Lords, where she joined the Labour benches in 1999
Disability
Obituary
Lady Wilkins obituary
Television presenter, documentary maker and disability campaigner who focused on a lack of suitable accessible housing
Jenny Morris
Mon 13 Jan 2025 10.01 ESTLast modified on Mon 13 Jan 2025 10.26 EST
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Rosalie Wilkins, Lady Wilkins, who has died aged 78, was the co-creator and presenter of the first regular television programme on disabled people’s lives in the UK. She was also a disability activist, documentary maker and Labour peer.
Link, made with Richard Creasey (then programme controller for ATV), was the UK’s first TV programme both for and made by disabled people. Beginning in 1975 as a monthly programme in the Birmingham area, it moved to ITV and soon became a fortnightly programme broadcast nationwide. It gave a voice to the emerging disability movement, challenged contemporary attitudes to disability, and demonstrated good practice and innovative approaches to the full spectrum of disability.
Rosalie, a wheelchair user since an accident in 1966, went on to research and present a number of documentaries, including We Won’t Go Away (1981, ITV), [...]