Abstract

FERRONI, Marília Costa Câmara  and  GASPARETTO, Maria Elisabete Rodrigues Freire. Escolares com baixa visão: percepção sobre as dificuldades visuais, opinião sobre as relações com comunidade escolar e o uso de recursos de tecnologia assistiva nas atividades cotidianas. Rev. bras. educ. espec. [online]. 2012, vol.18, n.02, pp.301-318. ISSN 1413-6538.

The major goals of this study were to learn about low vision students' perception about their visual difficulties, their opinion about their relationship with the school community and the use of Assistive Technology resources in daily activities. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was performed through a structured interview in 2010, applied to 19 students between 12 and 17 years enrolled in junior high and high school who used to attend visual intervention and rehabilitation programs in Campinas and Ribeirão Preto. It was noted that 94.7% of the participants presented congenital low vision and 5.3% presented acquired low vision problems, considering that 52.6% were female students and 47.4% were male. The results showed that 94.7% had visual difficulties at school, especially related to seeing the blackboard (33.3%), reading dictionaries (22.2%) and book reading (16.7%). Regarding relations with the school community, most of the students (79.0%) stated that they had positive relationship with their teachers, 68.4% demonstrated they maintained good collaborative relations with their classmates and most (52.4%) said they had no contact with directors, supervisors and other teachers from the school. As to the use of Assistive Technology, computer resources were the major resources mentioned and 76.7% of the participants in the study declared they used specific resources for low vision. It was verified that most of the students had positive relationships with teachers and classmates. Regarding self perception of vision problems, they emphasized academic issues, locomotion and leisure difficulties, such as watching TV.

Keywords : Special Education; Inclusion; Visual Impairment; Self Perception; Educational Technology.

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