The visually impaired and the school: an ethnographic study based on transformative consumer research

Abstract The purpose of this piece of research was to analyze the consumption of educational services during elementary education by visually impaired people. Based on Transformative Consumer Research, the ethnographic research was developed in a NGO which is engaged in the education of students with visual impairment. The data were collected via 16 narrative interviews with elementary school students, six in-depth interviews with managers and teachers of the Lar NGO, five interviews with relatives of these students, and seven months of participant observation. The results indicate that the schoolmates, teachers, school managers and NGOs that work with visually impaired people interfere directly in the consumption behavior of the subjects, being able to contribute or inhibit the subjective well-being of the students. In addition, the powerlessness before unfair taxes and the lack of adequate teaching materials are characteristics of the investigated context that accentuate the vulnerability state.