Academic support provided for students with visual disabilities is very broad, since the special room will provide accessible materials and digital texts that facilitate study, thanks to the "screen reader" software.
These new spaces, newly established at the headquarters of the Salesian Polytechnic University of Guayaquil, aim to promote the exchange of knowledge, to provide support and facilitate the inclusion of students with disabilities, both in the Guayaquil campus and in the Academic and Research Network of schools to help in the Inclusive Technologies.
Among those present at the opening ceremony of the rooms were Fr Herran Gómez; Andrés Bayolo, Vice-Rector of the Centre at Guayaquil; Juan Pablo Salgado, Vice-Rector for Research; and Raquel Ayala, coordinator of research at Guayaquil.
The role of the support centre is to provide academic assistance to teachers and students with disabilities, creating accessible documents and teaching materials adapted to the different skills of the people who attend the academic institution.
The room for the visually impaired will be a space for consultation of audio books and other materials, with the help of software for screen readers such as JAWS and NVDA. "We have a hard drive with 4 terabytes of information created and produced specifically for this purpose, available for the visually impaired and deaf-blind" said Nelson Mora, researcher at the TICAD Group.
The room has books, magazines, educational materials and other items in braille, as well as material for listening such as CD, DVD, movies, stories, texts and books.
