Profile of students with visual impairment by School Census — Brazil, 2008-2015

Abstract

Visual impairment (VI) affects 2.2 billion people worldwide, with repercussions on the regular Brazilian education network. The objective was to describe the profile of Brazilian students with VI between 2008 and 2015. This is a descriptive study, which used data from of the School Census. The association between VI and socioeconomic and demographic indicators was assessed using the Chi-square, non-parametric Wilcoxon tests and Spearman’s linear correlation. Of the 51 million students in Brazil between 2008 and 2015, 53.760 had VI. The HDI, GDP and the number of doctors per 100.000 inhabitants correlated positively and significantly with the rate of “some disability”, however, the VI rate was negatively correlated with the same indicators. Most students with VI were female (50.2%), brown race (41.3%), youth and adult education (39.8%), with an average age of 25.3 years old, of the municipal education network (71.3%) and the Northeast
Region in the country (52.7%). The evidenced profile suggests the urgency of strategic actions of political and educational initiatives that take into account social disparities in the population of students with VI in Brazil