Engaging with Children's Artwork in Mixed Visual-Ability Families

Abstract: We present two studies exploring how blind or low-vision (BLV) family members engage with their sighted children's artwork, strategies to support understanding and interpretation, and the potential role of technology, such as AI, therein. Our first study involved 14 BLV individuals, and the second included five groups of BLV individuals with their children. Through semi-structured interviews with AI descriptions of children's artwork and multi-sensory design probes, we found that BLV family members value artwork engagement as a bonding opportunity, preferring the child's storytelling and interpretation over other nonvisual representations. Additionally, despite some inaccuracies, BLV family members felt that AI-generated descriptions could facilitate dialogue with their children and aid self-guided art discovery. We close with specific design considerations for supporting artwork engagement in mixed visual-ability families, including enabling artwork access through various methods, supporting children's corrections of AI output, and distinctions in context vs. content and interpretation vs. description of children's artwork.