AVAILABILITY OF THE AUDIO DESCRIPTION RESOURCE IN DIGITAL DOCUMENTS AND VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES IN NORTHEAST BRAZIL

Abstract

In contemporary times, the intense industrial, technological and scientific development, notably from the 20th century onwards, provoked a great informational explosion, which demanded the mastery of new virtual dynamics for social interaction, mainly with regard to access to knowledge, communication and research in today's globalized world. In this context, Brazilian university libraries face new paradigms about their role, in which librarians and their users have intensified the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), with the need to incorporate minority groups in the process, as is the case of visually impaired users. In view of this understanding, this article aims to identify in university libraries in the Northeast region of Brazil, through the Institutional Portal, the use of audio description for digital visual documents, with a view to including users with visual impairments. The investigative corpus comprised nine university libraries located in the capitals of the Brazilian Northeast, based on a documental and descriptive research with a qualitative approach. To this end, in addition to the history of informational inclusion of visually impaired users, it is emphasized, based on digital documents and environments of university libraries in Northeast Brazil, the importance of using the resource for the dissemination of academic information accessible in the virtual environment , as a cultural product, transmitting knowledge, understanding, information, and expanding access to the social and cultural inclusion of these users. The investigation pointed out that audio description is not yet a practice in universities and that, therefore, it is still not possible to fully serve people with visual impairments.