The FNDE (National Education Development Fund, the federal agency that buys school materials in Brazil) has not yet published the tender notice for producing braille textbooks for 2027. According to Abridef, the association representing the assistive technology industry, thousands of blind students in public schools will start the next school year without the material. It would be the second consecutive year of distribution failures under the Lula government.
Producing a braille-ink book takes six to nine months, the association says. The timeline covers transcription, specialized review, relief printing and delivery to schools. Publishers consulted by Folha de S.Paulo say the tenders need to be published between May and July of the previous year for books to reach classrooms before February. That window is already compromised.
"It is an enormous contradiction. The government says it solved this year's problem, but the tender for 2027 has not been published, which puts the production of the material at risk once again," said Rodrigo Rosso, president of Abridef.
Asked by the newspaper, the FNDE, an agency linked to the Ministry of Education, did not say when it plans to publish the tender. The agency said it is preparing a five-year document to cover different stages of the PNLD, the national textbook program. It also said budget funds are planned for the 2027 production and that active contracts exist for printing already transcribed materials for the final years of elementary school and for adult education.
A repeat of the 2026 failure
The delay repeats this year's scenario. Blind and low-vision students started 2026 without the adapted books after production delays. Abridef called the episode "an unprecedented institutional and pedagogical crisis" and estimates that about 45,000 school-age students were affected. In May, G1 reported that the Ministry of Education had delivered less than 40% of the braille books planned for blind public school students in 2026.
In July, when Folha showed that the slow publication of the tender threatened to leave students without the material again, the FNDE denied any delay. The agency said the publication followed the PNLD schedule and depended on earlier stages, mainly the selection of titles by school systems. Now, according to Abridef, the delay is a certainty. The next step belongs to the FNDE: without the tender, there will not be enough time to produce and deliver the books before classes begin in 2027.