Press release
Mattel Receives 2025 Helen Keller Achievement Award
NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) is pleased to announce that Mattel (NASDAQ: MAT), a leading global toy
About this update from Mattel, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) is pleased to announce that Mattel (NASDAQ: MAT), a leading global toy and family entertainment company and owner of one of the most iconic brand portfolios in the world, will receive the prestigious Helen Keller Achievement Award, which AFB will present to Krista Berger the Senior Vice President of Barbie and Global Head of Dolls at Mattel during a special evening ceremony on April 24 in midtown Manhattan. Mattel is recognized for their global impact on the inclusion of people who are blind or have low vision following the release of its Blind Barbie doll in 2024. “For over 80 years, Mattel has stood as a leader in the social development of youth, harnessing the dreams and imagination of children everywhere through the joy of play,” said Eric Bridges, AFB president and CEO. “With the introduction of their Fashionista line of Barbie dolls, they have not only nurtured positive perceptions of people with disabilities, but they have also empowered millions of children across the globe who now carry a sense of pride into their classroom and on the playground.” First introduced in 2009, the Barbie Fashionista line offers kids a variety of skin tones, eye colors, hair colors and textures, body types, disabilities, and fashions to tell more stories. The Barbie Fashionistas series includes a Barbie doll with Hearing Aids, Vitiligo, dolls in wheelchairs, a doll without hair, and a Barbie with a Prosthetic Limb, among others that allow more children to be represented in Barbie and play out the world they experience around them. In July 2024, AFB partnered with Barbie to launch Blind Barbie Fashionista. AFB was honored to serve as an advisor on the project and witnessed firsthand the doll's enormous success worldwide. Mattel’s commitment to inclusion went above and beyond the physical design of the doll, working behind the scenes to ensure that physical packaging and digital marketing content were completely accessible to blind and low-vision consumers. Their marketing even included audio description for their popular online animated series Doll Island, which featured Blind Barbie and was voiced by a young female voice actor who is blind in real life. “We know that Barbie is so much more than a doll and that when a child picks up Barbie, it becomes a ca...