Spatial accessibility in schoolyards for students with visual impairment: the construction of an assessment tool

Abstract

To enable visually impaired students to attend regular schools, these students must not only have suitable monitoring, but must also be able to take part in all school activities without any major impediments. This means that the many existing barriers to this inclusion must neutralized or even eliminated. In addition to teaching barriers, there are also barriers concerning social aspects and the physical space. This articles focuses on spatial accessibility in schoolyards and shows that, when these environments disregard the needs of students - such as in terms of physical and cognitive needs - access can be made difficult or even impossible, limiting these individuals' performance in the physical space. Accordingly, it is necessary to identify the physical barriers in these environments before planning any spatial accessibility initiatives. Based on this assumption, the current article suggests procedures for building an assessment tool for spatial accessibility in primary level public schools in regards to visually impaired students. The full instrument consists of 10 tables that refer to given environments and situations in primary public schools in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The article presents the steps used to prepare and improve the tables in the schoolyards, as well as the setup of the tables. With improved schoolyard tables, the possibility of creating other tables under this instrument in order to improve other areas is demonstrated in the current article.