Exploring the lived experience of acquiring life skills with congenital total blindness: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

Abstract

This phenomenological study explored how individual young adults understood their lived experience of acquiring life skills with congenital total blindness (CTB). Four young adults with CTB, and five parents of the young adults, participated in the study. In depth, semi-structured interviews were used to gather information from the research participants. The interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Five superordinate themes emerged from the IPA: (1) life skills acquisition as ‘a means to an end’, (2) appraising life skills acquisition, (3) acquiring disability-specific skills, (4) reaching adulthood with life skill gaps, and (5) making sense of independence. The findings revealed that the young adults had reached adulthood with significant gaps in their acquisition of basic life skills. This indicates that more needs to be done, to improve the efficacy and meaning of life skill acquisition programmes provided in childhood and adolescence, to young people living with CTB.