Family Board: A new means for people with visual impairment to communicate inner pictures of social relations

Visual impairment often entails changes in social relations. In order to identify supportive needs and provide tailored support, it is helpful to analyse these changes. Non-verbal methods have proven useful to facilitate this process but had so far not been available for visually impaired people. The Family Board, an established method of depicting social relations, was adapted for use by blind people and pilot-tested in this study. After adaptation and pretest, seven visually impaired adults undergoing rehabilitative treatment volunteered to participate in this qualitative pilot-study. Results showed that the method of the Family Board was well accepted and that the adapted board provides a feasible new non-verbal medium of communication for visually impaired people. The Family Board could be used to complement qualitative methods in further research on changes of social relations due to the loss of eyesight, to follow changes during coping and adaptation and to monitor effects of counselling.