One of the films honoured at the event was I Swear, which stars Robert Aramayo and tells the story of Davidson, a Scottish campaigner who developed the condition when he was 12.
Aramayo won Best Actor and the EE Rising Star for his performance in the film, which also won Best Casting.
The corporation did cut a section of an acceptance speech from Akinola Davies jnr, the film-maker, who ended his speech with “free Palestine”.
The racial slur incident is the latest editing blunder by the BBC. The corporation came under fire last year over its broadcast of Bob Vylan’s set at Glastonbury, during which one member of the rap duo chanted “death to the IDF”.
Tim Davie, the former director general, apologised after the broadcaster failed to cut the livestream of the set.
After the N-word was shouted at the Baftas, Alan Cumming, the event’s presenter, issued an apology.
He said: “You may have heard some strong and offensive language tonight. If you have seen the film I Swear, you will know that film is about the experience of a person with Tourette syndrome.
“Tourette syndrome is a disability and the tics you have heard tonight are involuntary, which means the person who has Tourette syndrome has no control over their language. We apologise if you were offended.”
Ed Palmer, the vice-chairman of Tourettes Action, told Times Radio that the BBC should have considered “bleeping it out” if the show was pre-recorded.
He said: “This is really one of the most acute examples of where something that is a disability can cause quite understandably huge amounts of offence to someone.
“So, if it’s being pre-recorded now, then bleeping it out, for example, might be a reasonable compromise.”
Palmer added: “Representing the community, if there’s a way that we can reduce harm or offence around these things, then that seems like a really sensible way of managing the situation.”
Kemi Badenoch, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, said the BBC had made a “horrible mistake” for failing to edit out the slur.
She told Good Morning Britain: “It should have been bleeped, because I was told that there were two other things that were bleeped, you know, people shouting Free Palestine. So that is a huge error.
“The BBC made a mistake, a horrible mistake, I think the two actors who were standing there will have been the people who were the most embarrassed, because they wouldn’t have known what was going on.”
She added: “They are the ones who need the biggest apology. This is a huge, huge mistake. But I think this is something that we should look at as a mistake, rather than a representation of our country.”
A BBC spokesman said: “Some viewers may have heard strong and offensive language during the Bafta Film Awards.
“This arose from involuntary verbal tics associated with Tourette syndrome, and as explained during the ceremony, it was not intentional. We apologise that this was not edited out prior to broadcast and it will now be removed from the version on BBC iPlayer.”
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