Mediação da informação voltara para os estudantes deficientes visuais nas bibliotecas do IF Baiano

Abstract

The inclusion of visually impaired individuals in social spaces, especially in teaching institutions, requires from the academic community new postures and attitudes which, in fact, potentiate the integration of these people. Libraries must promote access and appropriation of information by means of mediating activities which understand and respect the individuality of each subject. The refore, this research had the general objective of investigating, from the perspective of information mediation, how IF Baiano's multilevel libraries have contributed so that visually impaired students may have access to information and appropriate it, considering that information must be accessible to all, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, physical limitations and social conditions. This is a descriptive, qualitative and quantitative research, which was developed using the case study method. The data collection occurred in 8 campi of IF Baiano by means of two distinct instruments: an interview script applied to 14 visually impaired students and a questionnaire sent to eight libraries from a total of fourteen that are part of the institution. Together with this action, we carried out a document analysis of the IF Baiano's Diversity and Inclusion Policy and the Unified Regulation of IF Baiano's Libraries. The analysis of the data from the interviews with the visually impaired students indicated that it is important to make utilitarian information available,because many of them frequent other social environments; to expand the dialogic process among library professionals, by means of sensitive listening to the visually impaired; to adopt mobile communication devices to facilitate the interaction and the offer of products and services; and to promote qualifications, aiming at the autonomous formation of these individuals to access the physical or digital resources made available in the libraries. Another aspect that strengthens the information mediation activities is the availability of resources that favor the access to information by these users, such as, for example, the offer of readers (people who read books and describe images). The results also showed that it is important to increase the qualification of librarians to meet this audience with specific needs; to allocate budget resources for acquisition of information resources and assistive technology for libraries; to implement the Braille sector in libraries; to build a service policy aimed at these students and improve the articulation between NAPNE and libraries, aiming at revising the Unified Regulation of Libraries at IF Baiano and offer specific services to visually impaired individuals. We conclude that the libraries at IF Baiano need to intensify efforts to offer information products and services to visually impaired individuals in an effective and conscious manner, as information mediation is still incipiently done.