Trends in Technology for People with Special Needs

Researchers and professionals in technology for people with special needs must stay updated on the latest scientific and technological advancements. This knowledge is crucial for those providing support people with special needs. Academics need to have an overview of the current research, stay updated on new trends and developments to connect their research, and advance technological progress for people with special needs. Previous literature reviews are limited in the time range they cover, their thematic scope, the number of articles they review, or the variety of publishing outlets they consider. To address this research gap, this paper utilizes topic modeling to identify trends in studies on technology for people with special needs in a corpus of 10,616 articles published between 2000 and 2022. 41 unique topics that represent current research in technology and people with special needs were identified. Topic modeling allows for identifying new research topics such as “Cochlear Implants and Language Development,” while topics like “Design Evaluation” remain stable over time. Future trends might include robotics and virtual reality. The study suggests that topic modeling is important for researchers to incorporate into their methodological toolbox and complements other approaches to literature reviews.