Technology for Life; The First Blind Barbie

In Touch

In Touch has learnt about changes happening to the RNIB's Technology for Life service that will result in major changes to how the service is delivered, and may result in staff redundancies amongst the team that has many visually impaired employees. This change is separate from a ten-year proposed plan of changes that we recently spoke to the charity's Chief Executive Matt Stringer about. These included a need for cost savings of around £10 million and may also result in redundancies for staff.

The world now has a blind Barbie doll. Influencer, broadcaster and model Lucy Edwards brought her into the studio to be introduced to the In Touch team and to tell us what she means for representation. We analyse more widely whether representation of this form is of benefit to disabled children with Rebecca Atkinson, who founded the Toy Like Me campaign. The campaign began as a call on toy companies globally to become more inclusive of disability within their products. Rebecca also began her own disabled-led children's brand, with her Channel 5 pre-school children's programme 'Mixmups', which has disabled characters.

Presenter: Peter White Producer: Beth Hemmings Production Coordinator: Brigid Harrison-Draper Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image and he is wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three separate white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word Radio in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one is a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.