disability in sitcom?

Question

does anyone know the first (or any) sitcoms that have featured a disabled actor/character?

All About Me and Phoenix Nights are the only two I can currently think of.........I'd like some examples from previous decades

Answer 1

Becker - Jake was blind
Robin's Nest - the waiter had one arm
Open All Hours - bad stutter (disability?)
The Office - girl in wheelchair
.. ummmm ... that's all i have

Answer 2

First series regular Actress Geri Jewell, who has cerebral palsy, was credited as the first disabled person to become a series regular when her Cousin Geri joined NBC’s sitcom "The Facts of Life" in the early 1980s.

Jeffrey Tambor starred as a blind professor on the NBC comedy "Mr. Sunshine".

Stevie Kenarban (actor Craig Lamar Traylor ) on Fox’s "Malcolm in the Middle," uses a wheelchair.

The ABC sitcom "Good and Evil" featured Mark Blankfield as a blundering blind psychiatrist - though the broadly played part, like one he had on NBC’s "The Nutt House," drew protests from the National Federation of the Blind.

In several episodes of Different Strokes, Arnold had a friend named Kathy Gordon who was in a wheelchair.

In an episode of Happy Days (#162), Fonzie dates a deaf girl (Allison), played by Linda Bove of Sesame Street fame. It's an excellent episode in which Fonzie realizes that she's the same as any other girl; she just happens to be deaf.

Answer 3

It wasn't a sitcom, but there was a deaf woman on Sesame Street as far back as the 70's. There was also a whole school of blind people on Little House on the Prairie.

Answer 4

Life Goes On...It had a Downs Syndrome boy who was attending hi school with his peers
these weren't sitcoms but they may be pertinent
Ironside, it was a detective in a wheelchair
In Armageddon the guy in the end gets a patch from Bruce Willis' dead character, he had braces on his legs

Answer 5

In The Office, series 2, one of the new employees is wheelchair bound. In The League of Gentlemen, series one, a character called Mr Foot often embarrasses himself by inadvertantly offending disabled people (firstly a blind man, and later a young man in a wheelchair).

Answer 6

Andy as in Lou and Andy.
Frasier's Dad has that stick, not strictly a disability but he doesn't use it in real life.
Nighty Night had a woman in that was in a wheelchair due to ME I think, she seems to have got better now though.

Answer 7

The Facts of Life had a girl with CP.

Answer 8

I seem to remember something with Thora Herd about a funeral home and someone stutters but it was so offensive I've kinda blotted it out

Answer 9

it's not a sitcom I know, but on CSI(the original one) the coroner has two artificial legs....