Helping Families with Children

Mother, father, three children on family bicycle ride smile at camera.

No one has more insight or better advice for parents faced with the challenges of raising a child with a visual impairment than another parent who has been there. In partnership with the National Association for Parents of Children with Visual Impairments (NAPVI), AFB created FamilyConnect® as an online community where parents of visually impaired children from across the country can exchange advice, concerns, and daily triumphs simply by logging on.

In 2011, AFB launched FamilyFriends, a new social networking feature that allows users to create and post a customized "parent profile" that can be shared with other parents whose children belong to the same age group, have the same eye condition, or live in the same community.

"We are raising a 6-year-old who is blind in a rural community. There are no other children in town like my son, but through FamilyConnect, I have a neighborhood from around the world that gives me the opportunity to reach out to other parents in our same situation."

—Emily Coleman, FamilyConnect parent

(Photo Caption) Nearly half a million U.S. children under the age of 18 have vision difficulty.
Source: 2009 American Community Survey (ACS)