Didactic Resources for the Visually Impaired: A Systematic Review of the Literature

This abstract refers to a full article in the research category. The human being is endowed with five senses, which allow him to capture the reality of the world around him. Vision is one of the most important senses of the individual for his development, both cognitive and social, and research shows that a significant portion of the population has some type of visual impairment, from low vision to total blindness. People with some type of disability face numerous difficulties daily, from locomotion, communication, access to information, social rights such as culture, leisure, education, and above all, respect from society, and in this way, Assistive Technology (AT) resources arise to minimize these difficulties, thus enabling better conditions for people in this condition. The article presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), which deals with the use of Didactic Resources for the visually impaired, the use of the Internet of Things, and how they can contribute to improving student learning. Through RSL, it was possible to identify the most used Assistive Technology resources and understand the use of these Didactic Resources aimed at visually impaired students. Identifying the use of Digital Technologies integrated with several resources was also possible. To carry out the searches, six databases (National and International) were defined, and the period covered by the research was from 2019 to 2022. The studies considered are annals of events, periodicals, theses, dissertations, and scientific journals with publications in the field of education and/or computing, thus covering the most relevant works in the area. The search string used was ((“Visual impairment” OR Blind) AND ((“Assistive Technology” OR “Didactic Resources”) AND (“Internet of Things” OR IoT))). As a result of the search process, 485 studies were obtained, which applied the inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in a total of 27 studies that answered the research questions of this study, making it possible to identify the most used Assistive Technology resources and also to understand the use of Didactic Resources aimed at visually impaired students, in addition to identifying the use of Digital Technologies integrated with several of these resources.