When Santina Muha appeared on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in 2007, the producers asked which chair she'd rather use: her own, or the studio's. "I asked if anyone else in a wheelchair had ever been on the show," said the actress, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident when she was 6 years old. "They said no, so I said, 'I'll stay in my wheelchair.'" Days after the two-part episode aired, a woman told Muha that her young son, who also uses a wheelchair, was so inspired by seeing the actress on television, she let him stay home from school the next day to watch the conclusion. "I was on TV for, like, 10 minutes, and I got fan mail from other countries," Muha said. "Disability needs to be normalized." As debates rage over what characters should appear on screen, and who should portray them, disabilities have largely remained undiscussed. Meanwhile, conversations concerning on-screen represen...
