The benefits of asymmetric abilities: blind parents play related interactions with sighted children

One of the central activities in child-parent relationships is family quality time. Yet, little research has been devoted to exploring the challenges parents with visual impairments (VI) face when playing with their children. We examine how parents with VI experience and navigate play-related activities with their sighted children using semi-structured interviews with these parents. Our results reveal the variety of accessibility challenges parents with VI face when spending time together with their children both indoors and outdoors. Nevertheless, parents and children made significant efforts to spend quality time together even in inaccessible games. In many scenarios, because parents could not participate as all-abled players in the game, parents instead focused on ‘being present’ with their children. Our results illustrate how breaking away from the traditional family roles and views of abilities (i.e. from an all-abled parent to a parent with a VI) may have valuable implications for child-parent relationships.