Reviewing the changes in how Channel 4 has portrayed disabled people over the last quarter of a century, it struck me that ‘disability representation’ is almost oxymoronic – because ‘disability’ encapsulates an infinite myriad of anomalies and everyone’s interpretation is individual. Whilst one person just cannot get enough of their ‘difference’, another will feel their disability is not integral to their life. And then to try and ‘represent’ this deluge of idiosyncrasies onscreen? I feel quite paralysed by the mere thought (Okay, more paralysed).

Fortunately, Channel 4 was undaunted by the enormity of the task and aired Walter on the first night of transmission, starring Ian McKellen as a young man with learning disabilities who is admitted to a highly dysfunctional ‘care home’ after the death of his parents. The channel’s renegade, ground-breaking future was blueprinted by showing this film. To show such dark disability content and, although Sir Ian is of course able-bodied, to cast many disabled people in the drama as ‘inmates’, was unprecedented at the time.

Since then, experimentation in disability programming has been an essential part of Channel 4’s remit, both to reflect changes in society and as an attempt to encourage social inclusion. One prominent avenue in Channel 4’s Operation Disability Visibility has been a stream of increasingly fearless and mould-breaking disability documentaries, including the recent Born To Be Different and Bodyshock strands, which take an honest look at the impact of serious disability, particularly on children who have debilitating and life-limiting conditions.

The 80-Year-Old Children focused on the Khan family in India who have five children born with Progeria, an extreme condition of premature accelerated ageing. The children are tiny and frail and struggle with arthritic problems and bone disintegration. They have been ostracised and bullied by an ill-educated society and told by doctors that their condition is incurable, yet they endure extensive medical research tests in the hope that this might prevent other children and their families from suffering in the future.