Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: TAINÁ MOREIRA DA SILVA

TACTILE CARTOGRAPHY: GEOTECHNOLOGIES BRINGING ACCESSIBILITY FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED

Tactile Cartography; Botanical Garden; Tactile Materials; Visually Impaired; Accessibility

Nowadays, it is common to use Geotechnologies in our daily lives, whether to locate ourselves, to portray some phenomenon or simply to learn more about the space we live in. However, in Brazil, there are still few cartographic representations that can cover smaller scales and are accessible to people with visual impairments. The UFRRJ Botanical Garden is a place where students, employees and residents of Seropédica use to stroll, relax and learn a little more about the flora present on the campus. In addition to being a leisure space, it also aims to promote Environmental Education. This research attempts to create a tactile map of the UFRRJ Botanical Garden, as well as tactile representations of the most important spots of this place, in order to portray its landscape. By producing these materials, the number of tactile representations increases and thus it is possible to reach more and more spaces that can be made accessible to people with visual impairments. The methodology used was Didactic Engineering, which is a qualitative approach, through research into possible materials that can be used in the construction of tactile materials. With the research carried out, the proposed materials will be constructed through the use of microcapsulated paper (swell paper), which when heated by a fusing machine has its alcohol microparticles that come into contact with black ink expanded, becoming high relief. This present work is justified by the need for more tactile representations of the spaces in which we live, including people with visual impairments and bringing accessibility to a space used by various audiences at UFRRJ, whose main objective is Environmental Education. It is expected that, based on the results produced, a tactile map of the most prominent spots of the site and other tactile representations of its landscape will be made available to the UFRRJ Botanical Garden