Special education is a phenomenon that involves different social, political and cultural spheres, exceeding school boundaries and involving a wide range of actors for its proper analysis. The present work aims to understand how the Brazilian Law for Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities -LBI (nº. 13.146/15) is related to the special education practiced in Brazil, in the modality of basic education. To this end, analyzes had been carried out with this legislation and with other national and transnational laws that deal with the theme of education and inclusion, considering, in this work, the 1988 Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (CF88), the Child and Adolescent Statute-ECA (Law nº 8.069/90), the Salamanca Statement on Inclusive Education (UNESCO, 1994), the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education-LDBEN (Law nº 9.394/96), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CDPD) (2006), the National Special Education Policy in the Perspective of Inclusive Education (2008) and the National Education Plan-PNE (Law No.13.005/14). Subsequently, in addition to these legal texts, articles from case studies carried out from 2008 to 2018 were analyzed, selected through the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo), aiming to understand the understanding that the academic community has about special education practiced in the country, and intend it with the results of previous analyzes. Through these researches, it was possible to identify that the LBI, when compared to laws that preceded it, presents approximations and a modernization in the way in which the Brazilian State approaches the issue of disability, such as the multiplicity of meanings attributed to the concept of barriers and reasonable adaptations, in addition to reinforcing the need for the use of Assistive Technologies and the creation of adapted school supplies. However, as demonstrated by the body of knowledge analyzed, it still presents some departures from the demands presented by these case studies, understanding that the process of applying the legislation involves multiple actors, with the agents involved in this process having a strong influence on the result that will be obtained from the inclusion practices, a point that goes beyond inclusive policies.