The FioLibras app, which provides information about covid-19 in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), is now available on the application platforms of the IOS and Android systems. Launched by the Institute of Communication and Information in Health (Icict) of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), the tool aims to facilitate access to communication for deaf people. The app is available on IOS and PlayStore stores.
The content was prepared based on research carried out with deaf people, through questionnaires online, in which they reported their main doubts and information needs about covid-19. From the data, informative videos were created about vaccines, treatments, risk groups, forms of transmission, prevention, diagnosis, testing and mental health. It is even possible to have information about fake news (fake news) regarding the disease and recent scientific research.
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128 deaf people were consulted between October and November 2020. The results showed the need for accessibility tools. The coordinator of the project and the Center for Information and Technology in Health (CTIC) at Icict, Luciana Danielli, reported that 76.6% of the people participating in the research were born deaf or lost their hearing before they developed speech. More than 61% said they had advanced knowledge of Libras, while only 23.4% said they know the Portuguese language deeply.
Most respondents (58.6%) use social networks as the main means of information about covid-19, although 40.2% consider it “difficult” or “very difficult” to understand the information disclosed in these spaces. In addition, more than 60% said they found many unknown words in the information, which made it difficult to understand the disease.
In view of this situation, the project developed a glossary with more than 80 entries in the context of covid-19, based on materials from the CoVida Network, an initiative of the Center for Data Integration and Knowledge for Health (Cidacs/Fiocruz), and the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).
For Luciana, communication and information are fundamental human rights for the human right to health. “In addition, they are part of public health policies and are central to the Unified Health System (SUS). It is essential to provide access to information in the area of health, adequate to the reality of society and in accordance with the plurality of the population. The implementation of accessibility measures is urgent in health communication processes and guarantees the right to information of people with disabilities”, said Luciana.
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53 unpublished videos in Libras are part of the application, produced by the project from the content of the questions and answers section on covid-19 of the Fiocruz Portal. More than 200 videos with accessibility measures were indexed from the Multimedia base of the Virtual Health Library (VHL). In addition, scientific articles on covid-19 were translated into Libras, available at the Institutional Repository of Fiocruz (Arca), in partnership with the Biosciences Portal project in Signals, of the Postgraduate Course in Sciences and Biotechnology at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) . It was up to ‘designer’ Marcelo Cunha Rabello, a worker at Multimeios/Icict, linked to Fiocruz’s Employability of the Deaf Person project, to design the application’s visual identity.
The FioLibras application was developed by the Icict Accessibility Working Group and funded by the Inova Covid-19 – Rapid Responses program. The group has been operating since 2015, collaborating to strengthen the construction of accessible practices in health communication and information and developing a series of training actions, such as seminars, courses and publications, including the Accessibility and Inclusion Guide for Communication Professionals, and the Accessibility course and the principles of SUS: basic training for health workers.
