Digital inclusion for university students with visual disabilities

Abstract

People with visual disabilities are a group of the population that has been highly violated in guaranteeing their human rights, including accessibility to information. In the digital age, the inequality gap increases for those people who find difficult to access information and communication technologies, even in educational contexts. This article presents the results of the research project “Digital Inclusion of People with Visual Disabilities in Higher Education”, whose main objective was to determine the advances in digital inclusion of students with visual disabilities in their higher education training. For this, a methodology with a mixed research approach was used, where the sample was made up of 26 students with visual disabilities from the University of San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC), from the 2020 cycle, from academic units located in the Central Campus and University Center Metropolitan. Also participated, 103 teachers and 32 workers from libraries or documentation centers. The results show that libraries or documentation centers have a preponderant role, from having bibliographic materials in alternative or accessible formats, as well as the importance that the administrations or academic leaders themselves, must join forces with human, financial and of another nature to implement accessible technological and digital inclusion tools for higher education training for people with visual disabilities at USAC.