Overview
These recommendations are the outcome of an undergraduate final project in Design, carried out at the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), with a view to greater inclusion of people with visual impairments in higher education.
This project began to take shape through the two student authors’ participation in the Product System Project (PSP) course on the Design programme at the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), taught by Prof. Dr Marina Ramos Pezzini. The course brief was built together with the students and aimed to widen the inclusion of people with visual impairments at UTFPR Curitiba. Working on that project turned the future designers’ attention to this part of the population.
The project presents a set of recommendations for creating and using educational materials aimed at the access, retention and participation of students with visual impairments at university. These recommendations can contribute to spreading knowledge about visual impairment, to the effective inclusion of people with visual impairments at university, and to supporting teachers in building activities, content and teaching strategies for everyone — reducing segregation and drop-out, and making equity in the classroom possible.
Rationale
The policies for access to higher education implemented by the Brazilian federal government (Programa Universidade para Todos – ProUni, 2004c; Programa de Apoio a Planos de Reestruturação e Expansão das Universidades Federais – Reuni, 2007d; Programa Incluir, 2013e; web) aim to raise the level of schooling of the population. In this vein, in 2008 the Ministry of Education (MEC) presented the National Policy on Special Education from an Inclusive Perspective (PNEEPI), which stresses that special education runs across higher education as a whole. The proposal is put into effect through actions that advance students’ access, retention and participation, involving the planning and organisation of resources and services to promote accessibility in architecture, in communications, in information systems and in educational materials, which must be made available in admissions processes and throughout all teaching, research and outreach activities (BRASIL, 2023a, web).
Then in 2016, emphasising the right of people with disabilities to access and remain in higher education, Lei nº 13.409 came into force, establishing quotas for this group at federal universities (BRASIL, 2016, web). As a result of these measures, the number of students with disabilities enrolled at university through reserved places grew by more than 150% between 2011 and 2021 (INEP, 2022, web).
At the same time, at UTFPR, 36,225 students were enrolled in 2021, of whom 55 had some form of visual impairment across all campuses, 26 of them at the Curitiba campus, according to data provided in an interview by the Student Affairs Office (ASSAE). Even so, people with disabilities still make up less than 1% of the population at Brazilian universities.
As the National Curriculum Parameters (PCNs) point out, inclusion is a perspective to be researched and tried out in the Brazilian reality (BRASIL, 1998, web). The right to enter does not secure inclusion, just as retention cannot be measured only by the length of the programme, but also by the development of the student with Special Educational Needs (SEN) throughout the learning process (LOPES, 2009, web). For Douglas Christian Ferrari de Melo, a lecturer at the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES) who has low vision, the challenge is to make it possible for people with disabilities to stay. He argues that educational institutions must treat institutional action on this as the highest priority (REVISTA QUERO, 2023, web).
Building an inclusive education calls for restructuring educational systems so that they meet the demands of all students. Legislation alone is not enough to support the sector’s needs; public policies are needed that target the training of teachers and the provision of materials with technological and graphic resources that support continuity in education. Rocha and Miranda (2009) carried out a study on the access and retention of students with visual impairments in higher education. According to the students with disabilities who took part in the research at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), at that university retention comes about exclusively through the goodwill of teachers, programme coordinators and family members, since they report a lack of adapted educational materials and, above all, teachers unprepared to engage with their Special Educational Needs (ROCHA and MIRANDA, 2009).
According to Baraldi (2017), the teacher holds an important function in the teaching and learning process of inclusive education, since it falls to them to mediate and adapt activities and content, and also to build teaching strategies for all students, not only for those with SEN. The professional working directly in the classroom therefore needs instruction, or some minimum knowledge, about disability. The author adds that no training can certify that a teacher will know how to handle every situation that may arise in the classroom; nevertheless, training is necessary to avoid harm to students. That observation is exemplified in Baraldi’s study, in which a teacher with a visual impairment — specifically low vision — reports that during his own degree he failed a Geometric Construction course because he could not execute the drawings precisely, even though he had informed the course lecturer of his impairment in advance (BARALDI, 2017, web).
The methodology and strategies used by teachers are at times described as obstacles to inclusion (ANTUNES et al., 2013, web). In this context, the preparation of teachers and their educational strategies stand out as approaches that contribute to the access, retention and participation of people with disabilities in higher education, since these professionals are facilitators of teaching and learning and are responsible for new educational proposals (OLIVEIRA et al., 2019, web). The audience of this work consists of the teacher and the student with a visual impairment at the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), Curitiba campus, constituting a case study.
Objectives
General objective
In light of the above, the general objective of this work is to systematise a set of recommendations for creating and using educational materials for the inclusion of people with visual impairments in higher education. To that end, the specific objectives listed below were defined.
Specific objectives
- To carry out a survey of primary and secondary data on people with visual impairments, accessibility in higher education, accessibility in educational materials, ergonomics and design recommendations, Inclusive Design (ID) and Human-Centred Design (HCD);
- To produce the analysis and synthesis of the data, and to compose a set of preliminary recommendations;
- To generate verifications of the preliminary recommendations with the public concerned, specified here as teachers on the Design programme and in other fields of education, undergraduate students with visual impairments and technical and administrative staff who advance the inclusion of people with disabilities at UTFPR, as well as accessibility specialists and other professionals and people connected with the subject under research;
- To ensure the participation of people with visual impairments at every stage of the design process, in accordance with HCD and with the motto of people with disabilities: "nothing about us without us".
Methodology
This project was developed on the basis of two works with similar objectives: the dissertation by Christofer Ramos da Silva (Master’s in Design, UDESC, 2017) and the monograph by the graduate Nayara Ailana Chela (Technology in Graphic Design, UTFPR, 2023). The method was divided into four stages: exploration, analysis, synthesis and verification, as set out in Table 1 below.
| Stage | Procedure |
|---|---|
| Exploratory stage | Exploratory literature review |
| Analysis stage | Qualitative content analysis |
| Grouping by similarity | |
| Synthesis stage | Propositional synthesis |
| Verification stage | Verification interviews |
| Final synthesis |
Table description
Table 1, "Graphic representation of the method applied", has two columns, the first for the "Stage" and the second for the corresponding "Procedure". The research is divided into four sequential phases: in the exploratory stage, the exploratory literature review is carried out; next, in the analysis stage, qualitative content analysis and grouping by similarity take place. The third step, the synthesis stage, covers the propositional synthesis; and finally, in the verification stage, the verification interviews and the final synthesis are conducted.
In the exploration stage, the knowledge relevant to the proposal was surveyed through an exploratory literature review. In the analysis stage, pre-existing Ergonomics and Design heuristics were categorised into levels of relevance through qualitative content analysis, along with the selection of the most pertinent heuristics and their grouping by similarity of content using a mind map. In the synthesis stage, the categorised information was converted into nine preliminary recommendations, which were then revised and expanded into twelve final recommendations for visual accessibility in educational materials.
In the verification stage, the twelve were verified using assessment instruments with higher education teachers from Design and other fields of study, higher education students with visual impairments, technical and administrative staff who mediate the inclusion of people with disabilities at the university, accessibility specialists and other people connected with the subject. The result presented, finally, is a table with twelve recommendations for visual accessibility in educational materials, together with the parties responsible and the opportunities for applying them.
Continuity of the project
The research that produced the 12 recommendations is complete, but the project does not end with it. The next stage is to take the recommendations beyond this site: materials for download in accessible formats, translation into other languages, and application in real teaching contexts, with the experience reported back.
That stage follows the same principle as the verification stage described above — nothing validates itself, and the eleven people who verified the recommendations were not part of the team that wrote them. That is why building what comes next is open to anyone who wants to take part: in producing and reviewing content, in audio description and narration, in braille, in testing with assistive technology, in translation, or in institutional and research partnerships.