As a person with disability, these are the types of comments that "frustrate" Hannah Diviney

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Gleeks everywhere (guilty) won’t soon forget the moment when Artie Abrams stepped out of his wheelchair and boogied to The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats.

While us able-bodied folk laughed at the ridiculousness that was Glee, relishing momentarily in the actor’s under-utilised dancing skills, for someone like 10-year-old Hannah Diviney, who is wheelchair-bound due to cerebral palsy, the dream sequence wasn’t as amusing.

“I spent my entire childhood, most of my adolescence, searching for representation,” a now-23-year-old Hannah tells WHO. "I never saw anyone who looked like me in the books I read, the games I played, in TV shows or movies,” she adds, explaining her initial excitement at seeing Artie on Glee.

“Here was this guy going through high school; he had friends, which was something I was really struggling with at the time; he could sing; he was having relationships. It was great.

“The feeling of realising that the actor playing him wasn't disabled and was sort of wearing my life like a costume was a punch to the gut,” Hannah admits. “And that became more obvious to me as I got older and started restlessly searching for it, that this was the case for most portrayals of disability across film and television.”

You can read the full interview on the Who Magazine website

[A woman sitting in her wheelchair wearing white trousers and a black jumper with a Koala in the front.]

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