ALTERNATIVAS EM TECNOLOGIA ASSISTIVA PARA TRADUÇÃO DO PAR LINGUÍSTICO PORTUGUÊS – LIBRAS EM UMA UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL

Abstract

Technology is something that is present in our daily lives, even if in a simple way, and innovations in this area are of great relevance to the evolution of our society as a whole, they bring knowledge transformed into techniques that facilitate the most varied activities, whether in our personal or professional lives. With this in mind, this study was carried out in order to resolve communication difficulties between the deaf and hearing academic communities. It was necessary to look for innovations in the field of Assistive Technology in an attempt to answer the following question: Can Assistive Technology provide greater linguistic accessibility for deaf people in the physical spaces of the Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste-UNICENTRO? What prompted the research was the significant increase in the deaf academic community in the academic year 2023 and the lack of qualified professionals to translate and interpret the Libras-Portuguese language pair, thus making it impossible to meet all the demands of the institution's deaf academic community. Thus, in order to intervene with innovative technologies that would make linguistic accessibility possible for deaf people at the university, the aim of the research was to demonstrate possible solutions, through Assistive Technology, that could provide greater linguistic accessibility for deaf people in the university's physical Spaces The aim of the research was to demonstrate possible solutions, through Assistive Technology, that could provide greater linguistic accessibility for the deaf in the physical spaces of the Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste - UNICENTRO, using Innovation in the social context and inclusion as a technical and scientific basis, bringing Assistive Technology - AT as a possibility to guarantee this accessibility. To develop this work, data was collected through bibliographic and documentary research in search of AT alternatives that could be used in this context, creating situations for experimentation by the deaf academic community, which were then analyzed through semi-structured interviews with 7 (seven) participants. The results obtained in the research pointed to the ICOM platform as the best alternative, among the possibilities, to guarantee linguistic accessibility for the deaf community at the university researched here, because as well as being an easily accessible platform, it also mediates communication entirely in the deaf's mother tongue, Libras.