From homework support and voice assistants to accessibility tools and everyday apps, AI is increasingly shaping how young people learn, communicate and navigate the world. For families of VI children, this brings real opportunity, but also new questions. How do you keep your child safe online? What are the risks worth knowing about? And how can AI genuinely support your child, rather than overwhelm them?
To help answer these questions, Look hosted an online panel discussion for parents and carers of VI children and young people. The session was led by Look Mentor and BBC Software Engineer Ben Mustill-Rose, joined by a panel bringing together a Digital Literacy Specialist, an Assistive Technology and Accessibility Expert, and a Qualified Teacher of Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (QTVI). Together, they offered a balanced perspective on AI, accessibility and online safety, sharing practical guidance you can take away and use at home.
Topics Discussed
- How Look Mentors are currently use AI
- What is AI?
- What do parents need to know about AI?
- How to use AI and protect your privacy
- What are VI young people using AI for?
- What are young people using AI for in school?
How Look Mentors are currently use AI
- Look, mentors share how they use AI in their everyday lives.
- Meet the panel:
- Rosie Bromley – Education Officer at Childnet
- Connor Scot Gardner – Look mentor and blind accessibility acvocate
- Marguerite Delaney – A Qualified Teacher of Children and Young People with Vision Impairment.
- Facilitated by
- Ben Mustill-Rose – A software engineer working at the BBC in Manchester.
What is AI?
- What “AI” actually means, and why it’s an umbrella term for many different technologies
- How AI systems are trained on huge amounts of data to recognise patterns, make decisions, and generate content
- What generative AI (GenAI) is, and where you’ll find it — from ChatGPT to built-in assistants like Meta AI in WhatsApp
- Why it’s important to remind young people that AI isn’t human — it can’t think, feel, or have original ideas, even when it sounds like it can.
What do parents need to know about AI?
- How young people are using AI day-to-day: voice assistants, search engine summaries, ChatGPT, social media, gaming, and homework help
- Positive uses, including creativity, learning support
- An explanation of online sexual harassment risks
- Risks around unreliable information, deepfakes, scams, and bias in AI outputs
How to use AI and protect your privacy
- Why talking openly (without judgement) is the best starting point for AI safety conversations
- Questions to ask your child about their AI use — what they’ve tried, what they think it does, and how trustworthy they think it is
- Why trying AI tools together can help you understand what your child is actually doing
- How to use settings and parental controls to manage data privacy and age restrictions
- Why getting your child’s account age right matters for built-in safeguards
- What to do and where to go for help if something goes wrong
What are VI young people using AI for?
- Image description tools like Be My AI, Seeing AI, and Aira for understanding photos and visual content
- Using AI to read inaccessible content, from restaurant menus to appliance displays
- Unexpected uses: navigating novel maps, exploring hotel floor plans, and screen recognition for unlabelled app buttons
- Using AI at work, including problem-solving in Excel with keyboard-only navigation
- Why AI “hallucinates” and sounds confident even when wrong — and what that means for trust and verification
- AI as a helpful tool, not a replacement for genuine accessibility
What are young people using AI for in school?
- How teachers use AI to generate lesson plans and training resources
- How students use AI for research and summarising, and why fact-checking against trusted sources still matters
- Upcoming changes to GCSE Computing syllabuses to include AI as a topic
- Practical tips for parents: reinforcing AI as a learning tool (not a replacement), being mindful of plagiarism, and encouraging fact-checking
- What to do if a child’s technology education isn’t progressing as expected, including who to contact at school
Q&A
- How to prevent your child from overusing AI?
- When to use AI glasses?
Resources
- Top tips for parents and carers, including a section for parents of 3-7s: Childnet: https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2026/top-tips-for-parents-and-carers
- GenAI cheat sheet for parents and carers: https://www.childnet.com/resources/cheat-sheet-generative-ai/
- Safer Internet Day Research: https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2026/research
- A collection of parental controls guides: https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/
- Family agreement – a practical tool to start discussions about how to behave online and set clear expectations for your family: https://www.childnet.com/resources/family-agreement/
- Safer Internet Day educational materials: https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2026/education-resources
Google AI: A message from Look Trustee Sara
For Safer Internet Day this year, we created new Family Safety Guides designed to support work with schools and families. As the policy debate around online safety continues, we know that many parents feel caught between the benefits of technology and concerns about its risks. Our latest research with Livity shows that while teens are increasingly using AI to support their learning and wellbeing, they are also seeking formal guidance and tools that are safer by design.
To help bridge this gap, these new guides—developed with our online safety education programme partner Parent Zone alongside the Internet Watch Foundation, Childnet and UK Government resources —provide practical support for families on:
- How to use parental control tools like Family Link to set boundaries and manage a child’s digital habits.
- Age-Appropriate Exploration: Using “Guided Learning” in Gemini and YouTube’s supervised experiences to ensure online content fits a child’s specific stage of development.
- Resources to help young people cultivate the critical thinking skills needed to navigate the “new learning frontier” of AI responsibly.
We hope you find these guides a useful resource to champion with the Look community. You can read more in our UK blog here and access the digital versions of the Family Safety guides here.
A huge thank you to our expert panel — Rosie Bromley, Education Officer at Childnet; Connor Scot Gardner, Look mentor and blind accessibility advocate; and Marguerite Delaney, a Qualified Teacher of Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (QTVI) — for sharing their knowledge and experience with us. Thanks also to Ben Mustill-Rose for facilitating the session.
And thank you to all the parents and carers who joined us — your questions and openness made this such a valuable discussion.
We look forward to seeing you at the next Parent Support Group panel event.
Support For Parents And Carers
Raising a visually impaired child comes with its own questions and challenges. Look is here for you, with parent support groups, events and a growing library of resources covering everything from education and independence to emotional wellbeing.
Support LOOK
Help us continue supporting visually impaired young people to thrive. Every donation makes a difference.