Rosalie Wilkins, Lady Wilkins, who has died aged 78, was the co-creator and presenter of the first regular television programme on disabled people’s lives in the UK. She was also a disability activist, documentary maker and Labour peer.
Link, made with Richard Creasey (then programme controller for ATV), was the UK’s first TV programme both for and made by disabled people. Beginning in 1975 as a monthly programme in the Birmingham area, it moved to ITV and soon became a fortnightly programme broadcast nationwide. It gave a voice to the emerging disability movement, challenged contemporary attitudes to disability, and demonstrated good practice and innovative approaches to the full spectrum of disability.
