Creators Mattel said the doll “invites more children to see themselves represented in Barbie”. The finished product was created with input from the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) in an effort to hear first-hand from the autistic community on the kinds of features the doll should have.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Writer by day, Comic by night, who aims to inform, inspire, and amuse. When Autism Speaks was founded in 2005, the autism landscape looked drastically different. Public understanding was ...

For years, we've thought of autism as lying on a spectrum, but emerging evidence suggests that it comes in several distinct types. The implications for how we support autistic people could be profound