Fostering parental co-development of technology for children with special needs informal learning activities

Parental participation during children's free-time activities, schooling, and therapy is of core importance. However, parents' participation in long-term technology development is very rare, even though its importance has been widely noted. This paper looks at technology co-development with parents within informal learning club contexts for children with special needs. In this study, we describe how fostering technology co-design and co-development with parents contributes positively to the parents' participatory experience and involvement in the children's activities. The research was carried out by utilising the principles of participatory action research and participatory design. Our work highlights that providing an active role for parental co-development of technological activities fosters technology acceptance and family integration in long-term technology co-design, co-evaluation and co-intervention. This has strong implications towards social inclusiveness, technology demystification and innovative co-creation.