Braille Material Production for Special Education Teachers

Abstract

The lack of didactic materials printed in Braille impairs the learning of the visually impaired students regarding obtaining knowledge through reading. This panorama stems mainly from the ineffective use of the resources offered for Braille printing, more specifically, in relation to the inappropriate use of existing printers. The purpose of the present study was to report the effectivenes s of three workshops offered to train professionals in the field of Special Education in the use of Braille Basic-D v4 and Enabling Juliet pro 60 printers. After each workshop, a questionnaire was applied to the participants to evaluate teacher didactics; accessibility to printers; the capacity for autonomous production of materials; and the time available to carry out the activities. The obtained responses about the teacher’s didactics and the content of the worksho ps were approved by the participants. The methodology developed by the present study served to elaborate a workshop that has been offered regularly at Instituto Benjamin Constant. This workshop contributes to reduce the critical process of Braille disuse (debrailization) that involves the education proces s of visually impaired students.