Higher Education, Assistive Technology and Inclusion of Pwds: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

This article investigates the state of the art in studies on inclusive teaching and learning processes in higher education courses. Through bibliometric analysis, it examines the predicted relationships between assistive technology, inclusion, and retention of people with disabilities (PwDs) in education, as reported in articles stored in the Web of Science (WoS) repository between 1993 and 2022. This study considered a sample of 89 documents cataloged by the WoS repository in the field of education. These documents were processed, systematized, visualized, and analyzed using the Biblioshiny tool—a graphical interface for the R Studio package—and the Bibliometrix package. The study revealed that publications on the topic of Assistive Technology applied to Higher Education, or, in other words, Assistive Technology as a mechanism for the inclusion and retention of students with disabilities in Higher Education, constitute a multidisciplinary field of study, but still in the initial phase of constructing its theories, methodologies, and possible applications as a teaching resource in Higher Education. They therefore show that this new area of ​​knowledge is still in the process of delimitation and definition of its own object, under the assumptions of multidisciplinary knowledge, as a sine qua non condition for its effective development and self-definition as a set of knowledge, tools, practices, methods, and teaching resources aimed at the inclusion of students with disabilities and the democratization and expansion of the teaching-learning process in Higher Education.