Inclusive Bibliographic and Urban Systems for Visually Impaired Students in Higher Education

This manuscript documents the emergence, consolidation, and reinterpretation of the Aula Inclusiva project at a public university in Ecuador. Over six years, this initiative addressed the lack of accessibility for students with visual disabilities through pedagogical, bibliographic, and urban interventions. The experience is framed as a subaltern epistemic community, where historically excluded students produced affective and political knowledge that reshaped institutional practices. Five components are systematized: an accessible bibliographic repository, experiential urban routes, the Canes in the Air sound laboratory, participatory normative protocols, and awareness campaigns. In 2022, students authored the Guide for Interacting with People with Disabilities, which has been used in training sessions and cited in the UCE Equality Rights Plan. The project connects with global frameworks of situated knowledge, insurgent corporeality, and epistemic communities, proposing a university designed from difference. It demonstrates that inclusive education is not a technical adjustment but a structural transformation rooted in lived experience.