PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE OF VISUALLY IMPAIRED EDUCATORS: SCRUTINIZING ACCESSIBILITY¹

ABSTRACT:

In a society that is constituted by patterned looks and the logic of normality, visually impaired teachers distance themselves from the standards of body, behavior, and ways of being and doing teaching, which causes strangeness. This article is the result of research that aimed to understand how teachers with visual impairments (blind or with low vision) face the challenges of their professional practice by answering the following research issue: how do visually impaired educators narrate accessibility for professional practice? To do so, narrative interviews were carried out with seven visually impaired educators who work in the Basic Educational System in three Southern Brazilian states. The narratives were organized in thematic groups and examined based on the discourse analysis, supported by Foucauldian references. The study points out that the higher the social barriers imposed, the lower the inclusion possibilities for visually impaired educators in professional practice. It also reveals that inclusion and accessibility have been thought of more for students with disabilities and less for teachers, whose professional insertion is recent and still causes strangeness in school spaces.

Keywords:
Visually impaired teachers; accessibility; normalization; special education