Abstract:

Today, information and communication technologies have permitted education to be more inclusive. Media and digital development have extended children’s abilities and senses. Accessibility has empowered policies and advances to promote disabled people’s autonomy, especially education policies and practices. This progress it is becoming an important asset to close the gap.

Traditionally disability studies had been approached by medical sciences. However, disability’s model had changed from medical to social. It had permitted other disciplines to study this subject. Chronologically, education researchers and politicians were the next ones to move towards this issue. Finally technological advances and computer science development have settle as the third most important research area. Nevertheless, computer science usually converges with education as key to inclusion.
This research shows a systematic review to characterize ICT studies on disability’s investigation. The main objective is to identify prime areas of interest and trends on Visual Impairment’s scientific production. It is also desirable to point unattended niches.

This review has used seven keywords of technological and blindness studies. They have been paired (one of each area) and searched in seven academic data bases. This paper reviews 431 articles. They have been classified according to its field of knowledge (medicine, education, sociology and computer science) or its main subject (accessibility, education, mass media and others). Education has been pointed as the third or the second most important area of research, depending on the classification criteria. A chronological and cultural trend can also be seen. These can be related to political advances in disability rights movement.

Keywords:

Visual impairment, visual disability, blindness, mass media, ICT, computer mediated communication, education.