Acessibilidade de pessoas com deficiência visual na educação a distância : diretrizes para criação de materiais didáticos em ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem

Abstract

The distance education is growing and expanding in Brazil, aiming to democratize education, reducing access barriers for all citizens. However, the accessibility of virtual learning environments, and especially of digital educational materials, still represents a major barrier for people with diverse disabilities and needs. Despite the incentives through public policies and the constant development of assistive technologies, the number of people with visual impairment included in the educational system is still small. Piauí appears as the third Brazilian state with the largest population of people with disabilities, proportionately, according to the 2000 Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). Within this context, the present research aims to promote the accessibility of the Distance Education System of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Piauí (IFPI), considering the standards of inclusion of people with disabilities, particularly the visually impaired. In order to achieve this goal, four methodological steps were proposed. In the first phase of the research, training needs on accessibility among distance education professionals of IFPI were identified through questionnaires. The results reveal a lack of knowledge about accessibility and assistive technologies and point to the need for resources and training to allow these professionals to make virtual environments and learning materials adequate to be accessed and easily used by persons with disabilities. In the second phase, accessibility of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) of the IFPI (an instance of Moodle) was manually checked, using as a reference checklist the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.Complementarily, an automatic validator was also used, which revealed other problems not identified with the manual verification of the checklist. These findings point out problems that are barriers for people with disabilities to access and use the learning environment. The third phase consisted of the verification of the accessibility of digital educational resources uploaded by teachers in the VLE as part of their courses. Many were considered not accessible, in two courses analyzed. Only Word documents could be accessed. The results of the accessibility evaluation of the VLE and the educational resources were used in the fourth and final phase of the work, in which a guide in simple and direct language was produced, targeted to distance education teachers of IFPI and other teachers interested in the theme. It presents guidelines for the production of accessible educational materials and proper use of the VLE accessibility features. In the evaluation performed, the environment configured to implement the guide and the resources provided were considered accessible for visually impaired people and users of screen readers. With this guide, we hope to contribute to improve and broaden the competences of educators, who will be able to produce accessible digital educational resources, removing barriers for visually impaired people and promoting a more inclusive educational system.