Accessibility, Gender and Higher Education: Indicators from Scientific Research

ABSTRACT This article aims to present a literature review of texts that articulate accessibility, gender and higher education published from 2013 to the current period. To place the object of study within the wide dissemination of scientific works, researchers must choose a method that includes information relevant to the research problem. This phase of the investigation, therefore, involves the choice of criteria for search management and procedures for comparing, categorizing and analyzing publications among themselves and with the research to be developed. In this context, the purpose of this text is to disseminate an alternative to literature review design made from the categorization and analysis carried out through NVivo 11 Program and the detailed reading of 72 papers developed in Brazil, Spain, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Canada. With the search software, the identification of the most frequent words allowed the elaboration of a conceptual mosaic that guided a discussion of the present research. However, the words lacking in the search procedure, but important for the development of the thesis - such as gender, feminism and woman - reveal the need to introduce these terms into an investigative work. The result of this literature review shows that the study on accessibility in higher education is developed predominantly by women and that the multidimensionality of the meaning of accessibility causes researchers to seek answers in other fields of knowledge, thus escaping the limits of the hyper-specialization of Special Education. This aspect can contribute to innovation and advancement of knowledge in focus.