A Bibliometric Review: Research on Assistive Technology for Special Needs

Abstract

The use of Assistive Technology (AT) has a vast potential to promote independence for people with disabilities and special needs, and the elderly. AT provides support to people with disabilities to live a fulfilling life and help them in their daily lives. Although there is an increasing trend of the studies in this field, there is a need for a comprehensive bibliometric review conducted to identify the trends of the use of assistive technology for special needs population. Thus, this study is conducted to fulfil this gap. This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis based on the Scopus database involving 464 articles from 2000 to 2021. In order to conduct the bibliometric analysis of the articles, VOSviewer software was used to analyze the trends of this research. In the beginning, the researcher conducted a descriptive analysis of the publication number trends, top authors and the leading journals in this field. Then, a summary of the co-authorship based on authors and countries, research trends, citation and keywords analysis and the co-citation analysis based on cited sources were analyzed. This article found that there is an increasing trends of research done especially for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Other than that, the recent research hotspot and research gaps were also identified indicating the future directions of the research in this field.