Let's try to put this into practice though.

So take the Stephen Hawking movie made recently. 'Theory of Everything'. Right off the bat there's the problem of depicting his younger years before the disease had taken hold. Some are saying 'well just get rid of the dream sequences' which is fine...but there's also the limitations you're put under with backstory. Let's ignore that for a moment.....how close does the actor's disability have to be to his subject? What if the actor needs a wheelchair but he isn't paralyzed? Is that close enough? Should actors with Multiple Scerosis portray roles with motor neuron disease? Diseases, disabilities, disorders are like snowflakes. Noone's exactly the same y'know? Where do we draw the line? And how can you portray the progression/development of an illness? How can you do Born on The Fourth Of July with an amputee? That's half the story. (sorry man)

And what about people with personality disorders or conditions that make them extremely socially challenged? Making a film is a social act. They spent a shitload of money on Rainman. Using a person who actually has severe autism as your lead actor would make the working conditions unbearable. It just seems kinda ridiculous to me. I suppose you could get a high-functioning autistic person to essentially 'pretend' that his condition is more severe (*acting).....but again, the more you compromise on the 'authenticity' of the actor out of necessity, the more you defeat the purpose of casting that way in the first place.

I'll say though.....there's certainly room for more people with disabilities to be represented in tv and film. But the article claims that the race and gender analogies are 'exact'. That's bullshit. I can't articulate why yet, but I also find it somewhat offensive. Casting to accurately portray race and gender doesn't have any inherent limitations. We can make a definitive statement like: A black woman should never, EVER be represented in a film by a white man. (I'm looking at YOU Roland Emerick) You simply can't say that for roles in relation to disability. There's often gonna be some sort of compromise or acception needed to tell the stories. But yah....we should make more of an effort to cast people with disabitilities. I just don't think we can make any definitive rules about it like we do with gender and race. And evoking blackface to make the argument just kinda pissed me off.

So yah, it'd be interesting to see someone with severe Tourette's get casted in the lead for a movie about Tourette's. But to say that it's immoral to do otherwise? Nah....