Mobile Technologies Used for the Development and Education of Individuals with Special Educational Needs

Individuals have different physical, mental, social and affective development progresses. Some of them may experience developmental disabilities which result in difficulties in communication, performing daily activities, learning, and adaptation to their environments. One of the missions of special education field is to provide such students with suitable educational experiences in order to improve their behaviors and lives. Fortunately, technology encourages individual learning and offer great opportunities to struggling and disabled students with different needs. This study aims to explore available mobile technology devices and applications and how they are used for the development and education of individuals with special needs through the examination of published studies in this area. A literature review was conducted in academic database and search engines including Science Direct, Springer Link, Scopus and Google Scholar to reach the related studies. The review was limited to empirical studies. The collected articles were summarized using the 4N1K technique into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. They were categorized under two main themes as mobile devices and applications, which were then separated into sub-themes according to the type and use of devices (e.g., iPad, iPod) and applications (e.g., Proloquo2Go, Picaa)