Mattel on Monday introduced a Barbie with autism for the first time, adding to a line of dolls to boost inclusivity.
The American toy manufacturing giant said it developed the autistic doll in partnership with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, a nonprofit group, over 18 months.
The nonprofit, headquartered in Washington, advocates for better media representation of people with autism.
The main challenge was creating a single doll to represent a condition where behaviors vary widely among individuals, according to Noor Pervez, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's community engagement manager, who worked closely with Mattel on the Barbie prototype.
Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental condition that affects how people interact with others, learn and behave.
Autism is viewed as a spectrum, meaning each person has a unique set of characteristics. The presence and visibility of these characteristics differ, and they can change over time.
A spectrum is not a straight line with people being "more" or "less" autistic, as was once believed.
Mattel said in a press release that the goal was to create a Barbie that reflected some of the ways autistic people may experience and process the world around them.
For example, the eyes of the new Barbie shift slightly to the side to represent how some people with autism sometimes avoid eye contact, Mattel said.
The team also chose an A-line dress with short sleeves and a flowy skirt that provides less fabric-to-skin contact because some autistic people wear loose clothes due to sensitivity to fabric seams.
Each doll comes with a pink finger clip fidget spinner, noise-canceling headphones and a pink tablet modeled after the devices some autistic people who struggle to speak use to communicate.
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US President Donald Trump said last year pregnant women should not take acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol, for pain relief because of a potential risk of autism.
saying there was no new evidence to prove that the drug, one of the most widely used medications in the world, can be directly linked to autism.
The agency declared paracetamol safe for use.
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