Play for disabled children in Taiwan and Hong Kong: parent perspectives

Abstract

This article discusses the findings of an empirical study, the first to investigate Taiwanese and Hong Kong parents’ perspectives on their disabled children’s play. The study employed an online survey to explore parents’ views on (a) the value of play for their child; (b) their child’s experiences of play (e.g. where and with whom they play); c) what, if any, barriers their child experiences in/to play. Our analysis shows that disabled children living in Taiwan and Hong Kong face many of the same barriers to play as disabled children elsewhere (e.g. in the West), but that these barriers have distinct ‘local formations’ resulting from, for example, high-density urban-living, family-based welfare systems, prevailing gendered family roles/relations, persistent social stigma towards disabled people and their families and intense valuing of academic achievement within Chinese cultures. We present this article as an original contribution to Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies, to Global Disability Studies and Play Studies. The article concludes by mapping an agenda for further research into access to and inclusion in play for disabled children living in East Asia.