If the character of Julia does her job, Ferraro added, “when [children] encounter [people with disabilities] in their real life it’s familiar. And they see that these — these can be their friends too.”
A survey released by the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University in 2012 found that 63 percent of children with autism spectrum disorders had been bullied. They were three times more likely to experience bullying than their non-autistic peers.”