Bay Area Family Delivers Petition To Disney Asking For Film Characters With Down Syndrome
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) -- Keston Ott-Dahl and her partner Andrea are moms on a mission: to get the Walt Disney studios to create a role model that their daughter Delaney, who has Down syndrome, can relate to.
The couple started an online petition to ask Disney to introduce movie characters with disabilities, particularly Down syndrome.
"I want people to know how amazing children with Down syndrome are," Ott-Dahl told CBS. "We put the petition up and we had a thousand signatures in an hour. So then we knew we had something."
The petition calls upon the studio to add characters more like Delaney to future projects "not to make a movie about Down syndrome but just to make it incidental that a character, hero or heroine, has Down syndrome," said Ott-Dahl.
The family made the trek from their Antioch home to Burbank on Wednesday to make sure Disney executives felt the full weight of the widespread support for their petition -- all 75,000 signatures.
The journey really began when Delaney was watching the Disney animated film "Frozen" with her big sister Jules. Jules told her mom that Delaney could never be a princess because there was no princess with Down syndrome.
That spurred the Keston and Andrea to create the petition.
In response Disney responded with this statement:
"The Disney Brand has always been inclusive with stories that reflect acceptance and tolerance and celebrate the differences that make our characters uniquely wonderful in their own way."
To view or sign the petition, go to:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/988/470/737/ask-disney-and-mattel-to-represent-children-with-down-syndrome-in-their-animated-movies
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