Serputko H. - The Current State of Writing and Publishing Textbooks for Junior Pupils with Visual Impairments (a Qualitative Analysis)

Contact: Hanna Serputko, Candidate of Philological Sciences, associate professor, Doctoral Student of the Departament of Ophtalmopedagogy and Ophtalmopsycology Special and Inclusive Education Faculty at National Pedagogical Dragomanov University, Kyiv, Ukraine. Academic interests: the teaching of people with visual impairments in special and inclusive education institutions, as well as the peculiarities of obtaining by persons with visual impairments education of different levels.

Key aspects of the current textbook creating process in terms of writing and publishing textbooks for junior pupils with visual impairments (with blindness and low vision) are presented in the article. A qualitative analysis of primary school textbooks for junior pupils with visual impairments has been done. At the current state of research the qualitative analysis is done by means of questioning teachers (primary schoolteachers/ typhlopedagogues) of special schools for children with visual impairments in different cities and towns of Ukraine, namely, Kyiv, Cherkasy, L`viv, Dnipro, Konotop, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Slov`yans`k, Boyarka, Kam`yanetsPodilsky, etc, concerning the quality of writing and publishing textbooks in Braille for pupils with blindness and in enlarged font for pupils with low vision. The questionnaire is compiled in such a way that its results make it possible to analyze the quality of writing and publishing textbooks for junior pupils with visual impairments on a number of subjects, i.e. The «Ukrainian Language» («Українська мова»), «Reading»(«Читання»), «Mathematics»(«Математика»), «Computer Studies»(«Інформатика»),` «Environment»(«Я досліджую світ») etc. The following aspects are presented: details of publication, the correspondence of a textbook to the Syllabus, the correspondence of a textbook to requirements of ergonomics and design, the correspondence to requirements for different parts of a textbook such as an introduction, symbols, exercises, tasks, a context. Requirements to graphical images and embossment, typing of a text in Braille, its placement on a page in particular and in the book in general are also taken into consideration. The received results of the qualitative analysis will enable standardization of creating special textbooks in Braille and in an enlarged font for pupils with visual impairments. The questionnaire contains one more component of the qualitative analysis, namely, assessment forms.
Their analysis permits to determine a level of adapting of a textbook, difficulties in perceiving the textbook by pupils with visual impairments, a complexity of the textbook structure. The above mentioned results will help find out necessary ways of improvement in the process of creating and adapting textbooks for pupils with visual impairments. This article is also an attempt to compare the quality of the textbooks in Braille published in 2017- 2021 to the ones published in 2014-2016 aimed at qualitative changes observations.

Key words: a textbook, writing and publishing, junior pupils, pupils with blindness, pupils with low vision, Braille, a questionnaire for teachers.