Potential of neurotechnology for voting by quadriplegic people as an instrument of human emancipation

Abstract

Ensuring inclusion and accessibility to public services provided by institutions is essential to promoting the values ​​of equality and democracy, especially in relation to elections. In order to guarantee the participation of all in the electoral process, the Electoral Court has sought accessibility pathways. Therefore, we aim to employ assistive technology so that quadriplegic individuals can access the electoral process, promoting their human emancipation. In this sense, this research aims to demonstrate our work related to assistive technology with quadriplegic individuals, highlighting the development of their potential. It is based on neurotechnology, as an assistive technology that promotes the autonomy of these individuals so that they can participate in voting in the electoral process, and is also based on the concept of human emancipation from the thought of Theodor Adorno, since promoting this autonomy also leads to the emancipation of these subjects, a theory we seek in the aforementioned philosopher. The use of this assistive technology is part of our doctoral research in Education at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and is being developed for application by the electoral court in future elections. For this purpose, we used action research, with a qualitative approach and the dialectical method, resulting in the development of a prototype assistive technology based on non-invasive neurotechnology that allows a quadriplegic person to vote, selecting the numbers corresponding to the candidates in the election, through their brainwaves, simply by blinking their eyes, promoting their human emancipation.