Protocolo para avaliar a acessibilidade ao computador para alunos com paralisia cerebral
Abstract
The national and the foreigner literature indicate that the successful education of students with
cerebral palsy can require the implementation of resources and appropriate equipments,
allowing the individual to improve their performance and complete daily tasks in a more
efficient and independent way. The assistive technology is a term used to name the
equipments / resources as well as the services linked to them that promote to the individual a
greater success in the accomplishment of activities, increasing, maintaining or improving their
functional capacities. The implementation of those resources is a complex process, involving
variables of the person, of the equipment, of the task to be executed and of the environment.
An appropriate initial evaluation is of great importance and the current study had as objective
to systematize a tool with specific procedures to verify the eligibility of computational
resources of high assistive technology to the students with cerebral paralysis to be applied by
a team of special education and rehabilitation professionals. It is a descriptive research, based
in a North American checklist already existent that evaluates the physical characteristics and
posture to determine the best way to use the computer. The methodology involved phases as
the translation and the cross-cultural adaptation of that checklist as well as the implementation
of a supplemental guide for additional use of the referred checklist for the educational context.
The translation procedures, theoretical and technical adaptation of the North American
checklist and theoretical analysis (content and semantics) were accomplished with the
participation of special education specialist professionals as judges. With the analysis of the
judges' results, the outcome indicated the relevance of the translated checklist s proposition
together with the itinerary built to the professionals' reality involved in the education of
children with cerebral palsy. The study resulted in a protocol for computer accessibility
evaluation, in which there are five parts, the first three were created (Student Identification,
Performance in the Classroom Academic Activities, Interest in the Computer s
Implementation) and the last two adapted from the translated checklist (PCA: Physical
Characteristics Assessment Computer Access for Individuals with Cerebral Palsy and
Conclusions). The theoretical validation phase should be accomplished before the checklists
are made available, and it is expected that the presented study will contribute to the process of
making viable a checklist for the evaluation and the prescription of resources of high assistive
technology that allows the computer access and, in that way, improves the education quality
for those students. Besides, it seeks a contribution to the practice of professionals that work
on that theme when making available that kind of checklist, collaborating on the theoretical
development of this area in the Brazilian reality