ICTs in special education: a worldwide bibliometric review (2001-2023)

Abstract

In recent years it has been found that more and more technologies are included in education and, specifically, in the education of students with disabilities. Literature supports that the technology enhances the integration and inclusion of these students as well as their equal participation in the educational process. Therefore, in the framework of the master's degree program named "European Policies on Youth, Entrepreneurship, Education and Culture» a literature review was prepared. The purpose of this study is to visualize and analyze the trends that exist in the international literature on the topic of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and education of students with disabilities. For this study the bibliometric analysis was used. The search identified 225 articles from the database Elsevier Scopus. The main findings drawn from this literature review are: (1) There is an increase in the production of publications between 2001-2022 and mainly from the period 2010-2023; (2) LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) stands out as a primary source; (3) in terms of country’s citations, the United Kingdom ranks first and Spain second; (4) Fernández-Batanero JM is the most prolific author among others having published 12 articles since 2016; (5) in terms of keywords, the words "education" and "students" are the most frequent. The present literature review contributes to the promotion of equal access to the right to education for all students regardless of their disability by using technological tools.