SCREEN READERS AND ACCESSIBILITY: HEURISTIC EVALUATION IN THE BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

Brazilian legislation guarantees access to information for everyone, advocating for accessible languages and technologies. Predominantly, scientific articles from all areas of knowledge have been published in journals with little or no accessibility guidelines for writing, submission, review, and dissemination. Furthermore, indexing platforms have presented usability and navigability barriers. Considering the demands of visually impaired people and other users of screen reader applications, this research aimed to identify and analyze accessibility for these users in scientific articles from a journal in the field of Special Education, focusing on imagery and usability elements. Descriptive documentary research was carried out through a heuristic evaluation of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of eight articles that make up volume 28 (2022) of the Brazilian Journal of Special Education (RBEE), indexed in the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO). The application of seven accessibility and usability heuristics resulted in eight errors for HTML and seven errors for PDF, suggesting the need for adjustments in the editorial policies of scientific journals and on electronic indexing platforms, providing practical accessibility approaches for evaluation, revision, layout, and dissemination of scientific knowledge.

KEYWORDS:
Special Education; Accessibility; Scientific production.