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Renegades is a documentary short series about disabled icons premiering on PBS for American Masters. Hosted by award-winning musician and disability rights champion Lachi, Renegades premieres Tuesdays, October 1 – October 29 on American Masters’ YouTube channel, PBS.org, and the PBS App.

The world premiere was hosted at the Kennedy Center on September 29th. On October 1st, there’s a live screening at ReelAbilities at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan.

Accessibility for the series includes ASL interpretation and captioning coordinated and created by D-PAN. There will also be audio description in two versions: the original episode with brief AD and an option for expanded AD where each episode will be three minutes longer to make room for more description. How do I know? I wrote AD for three of the episodes! Social Audio Description Collective put together an all-disabled team to write, QC, narrate, and audio edit the AD for all five episodes and the trailers. There will be more live screenings. Please note that some might have a live audio describer and not the SADC-produced audio description.

Some of the people featured in this series I had heard of, but not all of them. The film team chose disabled icons who are either not super well-known or haven’t been covered as much. And even for the ones I knew about, I learned a lot more about them from this series. You’ll meet or re-meet Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Celestine Tate Harrington, Brad Lomax, Judy-Lynn del Rey, Thomas Wiggins, and various family members, colleagues, and scholars who have invaluable things to say about these icons. I really encourage you to check it out. The episodes are short, tell great stories, and will definitely leave you wanting to learn more about each one of them.