There were slightly more movie characters with disabilities on screen in 2024, according to a new report, but experts and advocates say that figure — and the quality of representation — are still sorely lacking.

Last year, 20 of the top 100 grossing films featured leading or co-leading characters with a disability, according to the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, a California-based think-tank studying diversity and inclusion in entertainment.

That's a big jump from 2023 when there were eight such films, and from 2015 when there were 10 movies in which characters had noticeable physical, cognitive or communicative disabilities.

But on the whole, 2024's data was far more stark — only 2.4 per cent of speaking or named characters in the top 100 movies had a disability, the same rate as in 2

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