article: It was 1993 when Louise Dyson's agency was approached by Sunrise Medical for disabled models to promote its wheelchairs. She was stumped. At that time the Louise Dyson Agency Ltd dealt only in providing flawless models for clients such as Rolls-Royce and Laura Ashley. "We didn't know any models with a disability and I immediately thought that was such an obvious thing for advertising - to be representative of the consumer," she says. "But until that point it had never crossed my mind." The request led to Dyson helping to organise the Sunrise Model in a Million competition - the UK's first professional modelling contest for people with disabilities - which was won by Sharron Murray and Jason Ward who both received modelling contracts. The popularity of the contest piqued Dyson's interest and she put out a call for disabled models and actors interested in representation - she was flooded with more than 600 requests. Emboldened by the response she took a leap of faith, sold shares in her first agency and established VisABLE - an agency for disabled actors, presenters and models. But the doors were not as open as she had anticipated. "Although everybody said all the right things I knew they thought I'd gone mad and no one gave us any business in advertising for a long time. "We really had to make a business case as to why to include disabled people in advertising." It's a situation she is still perplexed by given that the market surrounding disability - known as the Purple Pound - is worth an estimated Â£249bn in the UK. "If you use a disabled actor in a campaign it means not only will disabled people support a company, so will friends and relatives." Crucially, she says, "It's a way of distinguishing against your competition." Signed to Dyson's books is Shannon Murray, the original winner of the Sunrise competition. She took the crown aged 17, three years after she was paralysed from the waist down in a diving accident. Murray had harboured dreams of becoming an actress but gave up on them after her accident "because there weren't any actors in wheelchairs on TV". The modelling career thrust upon her gave her a chance to challenge that. "I loved doing shoots but I wanted to put out a much stronger message, that fashion should be inclusive. "I was very aware that the teenagers I was meeting in the spinal injuries unit were still young, fashionable, wanting to go to nightclubs and had dilemmas over boys but that wasn't what I saw in the media." Her moment in the spotlight, which challenged perceptions, was warmly received, but she says, only because the fashion houses had requested a model in a wheelchair. "If I'd turned up wanting to walk down the runway it would have been a slightly different reaction." It is this exclusive inclusivity that is the challenge facing the industry in 2017. The notion that a fashion house or casting agent would request a woman in her 40s to play a mother, regardless of whether
summary: Acting and modelling are notoriously fickle industries often trading on perfection, but in the 1990s one woman challenged the status quo by setting up a professional talent agency for disabled people.