Benefits, social value, guide dog, assistive technology, blind, training

When thinking about “value”, its economic conception, based on the idea of exchange of goods and which, subjectively, reaches a certain degree of importance given to it, revealed in turn by financial offer when its possible acquisition. This type of valuation is not always considered the most interesting, especially when analyzing it from the perspective of improving human life. In the case of this research, we refer to the improvement in the life of the blind person, who benefits from the commodity (assistive technology) called a guide dog. Therefore, through the qualitative method, this research proposes another form of valuation of goods, which emerges through the identification of benefits that are part of a “social value”, given to the guide dog, trained at the Training Center for Trainers and Guide Dog Instructors, belonging, in turn, to the Instituto Federal Catarinense de Camboriú, also considering it as assistive technology and as an inclusive action for the visually impaired, and, simultaneously, as a complementary result to the training processes of guide dog trainers and instructors. Elected to participate in the research, the blind users of guide dogs and their families, the blind non-users of guide dogs, the socializing families of dogs, the civil servants who work or worked directly in the project and, also, the students trained in the same project. In addition, in order to achieve the objective corresponding to the identification of component benefits of social value, we will use: to raise direct benefits, added to the process of training and using the guide dog; to raise indirect benefits, added to the process of training and using the service dog. The survey of component benefits of social value will be achieved through interviews with those involved. In addition, bibliographic research will be used to identify the component benefits of social value.