Yelitza Ramírez is a 23-year-old blind woman. She was born premature, and thus developed the condition of her eyes: the added oxygen in the incubator burned her retinas. But this has not been an impediment to achieve her dreams.
By Luz Dary Depablos / Correspondent lapatilla.com
At present, external factors such as the lack of investment in the traditional public universities of Venezuela have become an obstacle to fulfill some of the assignments as a first-year student of Social Communication at Los Andes University – Táchira (Universidad de Los Andes, ULA), that does not have the appropriate equipment or software for inclusion of special or disabled students.
This university student travels daily from Troncal 5, specifically from the town of El Piñal, in the Fernández Feo Municipality, located more than 40 kilometers away from San Cristóbal, almost a two hour trip by road on public transportation.
Prior to this long journey that she undertakes daily without the company of any family member, she gets up at 3:00 in the morning to prepare her breakfast and lunch, because the budget crisis at the university forced the closure of the lunchroom which benefited hundreds of students from distant municipalities.
Yelitza states that she is frustrated in her computer classes, where she feels excluded because the equipment is obsolete and does not have the “Jaws” software, which is a screen reader for blind people, a program that all computers from the Bolivarian University have where at another time she received some classes.
She longs for the conditions in the ULA to be more inclusive because until now only her interest in improving herself and the support of her teachers, despite not having the right equipment to teach people with this condition, is the only option she has to to achieve her goal of graduating in the midst of the serious budget crisis that this house of higher education is going through.
Without resources
Omar Pérez Díaz, Vice Chancellor of the ULA – Táchira, who knows closely the budgetary crisis that this university is experiencing, is in charge of giving Yelitza personalized classes in the subject of Economics. He recalls that three promotions ago, despite so many limitations, just another blind young woman ranked first in performance in the Social Communication Studies.
Although, like him, other professors at this university are also very willing to teach Yelitza, the lack of adequate equipment will continue to be an obstacle just when universities in the rest of the world are already beginning to incorporate Artificial Intelligence into the training platforms of their students.
The ULA – Táchira for years was always in the first place in the ranking of the best universities in Venezuela, but due to the lack of investment to improve its equipment, infrastructure, teacher training and updating of their technological platform, it lost that position and descended to the fourth place, as indicated by Pérez Díaz.
“Unfortunately we have obsolete equipment, completely out of the market and some just have not been updated. We have not had the resources to incorporate these new tools which are a reference to offer better education,” said the Vice Chancellor,
Likewise, he explained that in the case of the Business Administration career, there is no adequate software for accounting purposes, or for financial mathematics, among others.
He emphasized that the equipment that does work does not have the speed or the required capacity, so in his opinion “this limitation of investment in new technologies makes us fall and distance ourselves further from the development processes.”
Updating and incorporating new software in laboratories and specialized classrooms in Venezuelan public universities requires large investments that have not been carried out for more than a decade.
“The government has not understood that education is a social investment. Where there is good education, there are good citizens and great cities,” concluded the professor, Omar Pérez Díaz.