A inclusão educacional de alunos com deficiência visual: contribuições das tecnologias assistivas para o processo de escolarização

Abstract

The inclusive educational process and Special Education have been the agenda in several areas of teacher training, whether in undergraduate, graduate or improvement courses, encouraging further studies. In this sense, the objective of this research is to understand how the historical trajectory of special education took place until the school inclusion process, having as main focus the analysis of the determinants that influenced the schooling of students with visual impairment in the different periods of humanity, considering the technologies assistive devices as tools present in this process. In order to do so, using the method of historical-dialectical materialism and based on historical-cultural theory, through bibliographic research, we sought to identify the conceptions that permeated the understanding of those responsible for the elaboration of educational policies and/or professionals who worked with visually impaired students, from the mystical conception of disability, which initially was the justification of all defects, going through the naive biological and reaching the sociopsychological. Assistive technologies for the schooling process of people with visual impairments are presented and, through field research with application of a questionnaire, analyzed from the responses of 24 people with visual impairments regarding access and contributions of these in their process of school studies with emphasis on higher education, as well as information from 10 secondary and higher education teachers regarding the use of these tools. As a result, the contributions of these tools are fundamental because they have the potential for the autonomy of these students in the classroom, demonstrating how much they enable the condition of participation in the process of appropriation of scientific knowledge, historically accumulated, as well as for autonomous life, social and labor. The limits pointed out on the use of assistive technologies refer to the conditions imposed by the current capitalist societal model.