On a sunny evening, Dalesha Richardson stands on a courtyard sidewalk near her Springfield apartment. Holding her white cane horizontal to the ground, she is playing the part of a train crossing gate.
“Tickets, please!” she calls out as her 3-year-old son, Elijah, barrels toward her on his white balance bike.
Elijah is a big fan of model trains, but today he doesn’t respect the call for tickets, instead giggling as he pushes up his mom’s cane and ducks under to continue on his route before circling back to do it all again.
Like many mother-son duos, they are immersed in playtime. And like approximately 2% of Illinois adults, Richardson also happens to be legally blind.
Her disability, she says, has been used to prevent her from having full custody of her son.
Just like she uses mobility aids and other senses to navigate the world and care for herself without sight, Richardson says she finds ways to parent that do not rely on full sight.
Legal blindness is a category that includes a spectrum of visual perception, from the ability to see shapes and a blurry field of vision to the inability to perceive light. Richardson has enough usable vision to see colors and shapes – she can even read print if it is large enough.
She can see, for example, when the bus arrives, or when her son is zooming toward her legs on his bike.
To supplement her limited vision, Richardson relies on an array of tools and strategies. Like many people with severe visual impairments, Richardson has completed orientation and mobility courses that help teach bodily and spatial awareness, reliance on other senses and techniques to navigate the world and ride public transportation independently.
When a task relies on sight – like finding a pill that has fallen to the floor – well, there’s an app for that. Actually, there are several that Richardson uses. She opens one called Be My Eyes and selects the option to dial a volunteer.
“Would you be able to help me find the matching cups to my son’s sippy cups right here?” Richardson asks, pointing her phone camera at a dish rack. “I need a blue one, the blue lid and the blue bottom.”
The volunteer on the line directs her hand to the left rack for the cup bottom and to the right for the matching lid. She thanks him and hangs up. The same application allows her to take a photo and use AI to describe it aloud.
Other tools in Richardson’s kitchen have safety features to help with cooking, though Richardson laughingly admits she does not love to cook. When she needs to, though, her stove handles are labeled with bump dot stickers so that she can tell how far to turn the dial. Her meat thermometer reads the temperature aloud, and she uses a cooking pot with a built-in strainer for pasta.
As part of the legal battle for custody, Richardson took a Zoom parenting class and completed CPR training to prove her competency to care for her son.
“But it was just never enough, it seemed, to have Elijah in my care unsupervised,” Richardson said.
In January, a Sangamon County Circuit Court judge awarded Richardson increased weekly parenting time, giving her the right to supervised time with her son two nights a week. An hour and a half of that time could be spent unsupervised.
In May, Elijah’s biological father died.
“I spent 12 years dating this guy and at one point he was my best friend, like we were really close, and he was the father of my son,” Richardson said, recalling her sadness when learning of his death.
As the surviving parent, Richardson said friends told her she would have full custody of Elijah. After all the court proceedings, she was wary. She called the police station to be sure. Richardson said they confirmed that she could keep him.
A few days later, Elijah’s paternal grandparents filed for guardianship, asking that they be granted the parenting time schedule previously awarded to their son. The filing lists reasons for their petition.
“That [Dalesha] Richardson is legally blind and has very significant vision problems, such that she is unable to make and carry out the day-to-date [sic] childcare for the minor child and to carry out day-to-day childcare decisions concerning the minor child,” the petition stated.
The petition also lists reasons why the grandparents’ guardianship would be favorable, including their interest in supporting his education, care and well-being. Aside from her blindness, there are no other stated concerns regarding Richardson’s inability to parent her son, although they may have been considered during court proceedings. Ultimately, the judge sided in favor of Elijah’s grandparents. They declined to be interviewed for this story.
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that courts conduct an individualized assessment of a parent’s ability to provide for their child’s needs and that they not rely on stereotypes about the parenting abilities of people with disabilities.
However, it is not uncommon for blind parents to claim disability-based discrimination in custody proceedings. A 2012 report by the National Council on Disability found that parents with disabilities were the only distinct community of Americans to regularly struggle to retain custody of their children.
“In families where the parental disability is physical, 13 percent have reported discriminatory treatment in custody cases. Parents who are deaf or blind report extremely high rates of child removal and loss of parental rights,” the report said.
Dalesha Richardson laughs as her son, Elijah, bikes past her while playing train.
The National Federation of the Blind advocates for equal treatment of visually impaired people. Chris Danielsen, director of public relations for the organization, said they had assisted in a number of legal cases where a parent’s blindness was used against them in a custody dispute.
“I cannot tell you exactly how many cases we have been involved in or who was involved for confidentiality reasons, but what I can tell you is that this is a big enough nationwide problem that we have sought the passage of legislation in all states to make it clear that disability alone must not be the basis for determinations about parental rights,” Danielsen said.
Dalesha Richardson, son Elijah and Richardson’s personal assistant, Torrence Craig Jr,. play with toys on the floor in Elijah’s room.
Illinois is one of the states that has adopted the National Federation of the Blind’s model bill by passing the Parental Rights for the Blind Act, signed into law by Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2017. The legislation sought to protect due process and equal rights for blind parents.
“Every parent deserves to be judged by their ability to love and care for their child, not by a disability,” bill sponsor Sen. Sue Rezin said.
The General Assembly found that blind individuals face “unfair, preconceived and unnecessary societal biases” regarding their ability to successfully parent their children, especially in legal proceedings for custody of their children.
“The bill said a person’s blindness shall not be the basis of a denial or restriction of parenting time or responsibilities,” Rezin said. “The bill provides that the party bringing the allegation must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the blindness endangers or will endanger the health, safety or welfare of a child.”
Richardson thinks her son is not in danger with her.
“Mind you, I had him in my care for two months and nothing ever happened to him,” Richardson said. “I took care of him, I took the bus by myself. I have a backpack leash so that he’s safe, that keeps him close to me.”
Torrence Craig Jr. works as a personal assistant for Richardson through the Illinois Department of Human Services Division of Rehabilitation Services. He comes to help her four days a week with tasks like cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping. He is also one of the court-approved supervisors for Richardson’s parenting time with Elijah.
“She never put him in danger,” Craig said. “The only thing he had was maybe his shoes weren’t on right, he may have had a fall at the park.”
He added that she is very careful in the kitchen, only using the back burners and always putting knives and dishes in the sink where they cannot fall.
Craig described Richardson teaching her son to speak well and to help her navigate. Walking back to the apartment after playing in the courtyard, Elijah pointed out the directions to get home and warned his mother about a car on the road.
“He’s safe and comfortable, he sleeps, he listens to her, hugs her, he jokes with her,” Craig added. “He’s doing fine when he’s next to his mom.”
Dalesha Richardson gives son Elijah air kisses.
Richardson walked to her closet to retrieve her old Braille writer. Elijah, who had been diligently watching his favorite television show – “Paw Patrol” – apparently realized his mom had left the room.
“I couldn’t find you!” he called, running in. “I wanna go watch my show.”
Richardson scooped up her son, giving him a barrage of loud kisses in the air before following him back to the living room. She hopes to win an appeal for full custody, but tonight, she will just enjoy the time with her son.
Maggie Dougherty was a summer intern with Illinois Times while she completed her master’s degree with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She previously served as a reporting fellow with Capitol News Illinois in Springfield and has a bachelor’s degree in global and international studies.
This article appears in October 23-29, 2025.
Who was the judge in this case?
I feel for her. I’m also a Mom with vision loss. Custody decisions should always be about the quality or care, like this article states. She loves her Son very much. She deserves a fair hearing. #TeamBlindMoms
I stand with my cuzzo.
I read this article, and it is sad that a mother who obviously loves her child. Has to go through the court system to have him. He wasn’t taken at birth by DCFS, but from a grandmother. Who is a mom herself, without any evidence of mistreatment or child neglect or anything that showed red flags. This is an unfair and unethical situation. It’s disgraceful what the Sangamon court system has done to that young lady. It’s getting really scary in society when a woman rights are getting taking away for unconstitutional reasons. A judge can take your child away, just because a grandmother wants the child. The judge placed all these stipulations on this mother. She completely finished everything that was put in place to get her child back. But, yet the court system still failed her. It makes me wonder are those “judges mothers or fathers. Because they are heartless to this particular case. I pray that this 3rd time around the court system gives Ms. Richardson justice.
Can’t figure out the author’s purpose in writing this article other than to stir up anger among the local activists.
The judge would be violating both state and federal law if they determined the custody arrangement based on the fact that the mother is blind.
It may be the mother’s belief that she has been discriminated against, but I’d bet anything that the judge’s decision had nothing to do with blindness. The author could have easily dug into the nitty-gritty details, but chose not to.
We are getting one side of the story with zero actual details about the details surrounding the custody dispute.
Typical
LMAOOO you should change your username from “Burger Addict” to “Well Actually.”
It’s slimy and dehumanizing when people turn real lived experiences into a hypothetical debate to shield themselves from feeling empathy.
Wow — it’d be a real shame if every single post from you did exactly that 🙄
I LOV TH E ILLINOIS TIMES!!
Articles such as these sometimes leave out important mitigating factors. Perhaps there is more to this and the Judge is correct. Perhaps not and she take care of the child.