Dimensão subjetiva da realidade educacional dos universitários com deficiência visual em tempos de pandemia da COVID-19

Abstract

This research had as general objective to apprehend the subjective dimension of the educational reality of university students with visual impairments during remote teaching implemented as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic and as specific objectives sought to a) explain the educational reality of university students with visual impairments during teaching remote; b) apprehend the meanings of visually impaired university students from a federal public university in northeastern Brazil about teaching actions from an inclusive perspective, especially in the pandemic context; c) apprehend the meanings that university students with visual impairment attribute to services an support for inclusion at the university, especially in the context of remote teaching. This research had the Socio-Historical Psychology as its theoretical-methodological basis, more specifically the production of Vygotsky, which is based on Dialectical Historical Materialism. The participants in the research were 6 university students with visual impairment, from different undergraduate courses at a public university in northeastern Brazil. For data production, we used the semi-structured interview and the reflective session, recorded in audio and video in a virtual way. For data analysis, we used the Meaning Nuclei. In the discussion of the data, the analysis movement points to work overload the lack of accessibility of digital platforms and academic activities, especially in classes, which implies in teaching practice. Some participants reported difficulties in concentrating in class and in mastering technologies. The analysis showed that, in remote teaching, the protagonism was given to digital technology, with the visually impaired student being a mere extra and almost always made invisible. Is this context, the educational needs of university students with visual impairments were neglected. The data signaled the fragility of the university’s support services for people with disabilities, especially during remot teaching. The results also showed that remote teaching explained an unequal and excluding educational reality acclaimed by meritocracy, which is a mechanism of exclusion understood by students with visual impairments as something natural and ideologically positive. It was also possible to apprehend that, in time of a pandemic, the oppressions experienced by university students with visual impairments widened, characterized by intersectionality such as ableism, patriarchy, racism and capitalism, which cruelly impose disadvantages on these people, making them inferior and excluding them. Those of social interaction. These situations are constantly being experienced by university students with disabilities in the educational institution and make them cry out for human rights. Finally, the remote teaching implemented in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic promoted the scrapping of education. Thus, in the current conjuncture, it is imponderable to implement teaching model, here we refer to the hybrid, while the university goes through a depletion of students, due to the lack of conditions for permanence, strained by the impoverishment of the population, of which the university with disabilities is part. Parallel to this, the university goes through a contingency of funds, due to the precariousness of teaching work. In this context, without effective support for people with disabilities, the setback in the inclusive process is being potentiated.