What Is Known about Assistive Technologies in Distance and Digital Education for Learners with Disabilities?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Dear Authors, your scientific study addresses important issues that are not only of scholarly significance but also have practical implications. However, personally, I find your methodology less convincing. My main concern lies with the selection of source texts for analysis. While I agree that Web of Science and Scopus are significant databases, Google Scholar raises doubts as a credible academic source. Replacing it with PubMed in the second phase of the study only added further confusion. Additionally, the other criteria for selecting research material do not seem persuasive to me. In my opinion, the primary task at hand is to revise the description of the methodology to alleviate doubts. Only then can we proceed to discuss the content of the analyzed sources.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We are writing to first express our gratitude for the insightful comments and constructive suggestions provided by the reviewers. We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested in evaluating our work and offering valuable feedback.

We are pleased to inform you that we have carefully considered each comment and suggestion and have meticulously incorporated all recommended changes into the manuscript. Below you will find the revised manuscript with all changes highlighted in yellow.

We provide next a summary of the revisions made in response to the reviewers' comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Minor Recommendations:

·      Briefly describe the results in the Abstract.

·      A stronger rationale for doing this literature review would improve the paper. Why is this important?

·      Do not personify inanimate objects (e.g. “Educational inclusion has found in technology a way to . . .”).

·      Description of the methods should be written in past tense, as should descriptions of the published studies (e.g. “The literature review, broadly speaking, is carried out . . .” and “The articles focused on teachers analyze aspects” and “Mengi & Alpdogan (2020) addresses the difficulties of distance learning”).

·      For the exploratory criteria, what is the difference between “Publications on assistive technologies” and “Publications of the last 10 years”?

·      The list Final Criteria includes two items labeled “(c)” and no item labeled “(d).”

·      Why did you select those five databases? What were your criteria?

·      Table 1 does not have a title.

·      In Table 1, it is not clear which documents are associated with each of the four types of publications.

·      It looks like the Scherer quotation is repeated.

 

Major Recommendations:

·       The manuscript should be thoroughly edited to improve the quality of the writing. For example, “a possibility of balancing the possibilities of access” and “However, disability is a reason that, regardless of whether one comes from a rich or poor country, with or without racial or creed problems, with or without armed conflicts or diseases that affect the population, cuts across all societies and, therefore, requires answers not only from the point of view of accessibility to education, but also from the promotion of full participation capable of 25 maximizing the possibilities of people in society, regardless of their disability (McNaughton & Bryen, 2007)” and “It is reported that at the present educational . . .” and “guaranteeing equal access it was limited”

·      It is not clear that “Teachers have the duty and responsibility to facilitate the achievement of this objective” across “the world.” In countries without supporting legislation and resources, teachers are not expected to accommodate, or even include, students with disabilities.

·      The review briefly describes the results of the studies, but does not critique the quality of the studies. Are there any randomized control trials in the studies or quasi-experimental designs? Do the studies include similar control groups? It is also important to distinguish between intervention studies, and studies of attitudes and beliefs.

·      The conclusion about disabilities that are studied versus understudied should be contextualized by the prevalence of those disabilities.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

As noted in the review, The manuscript should be thoroughly edited to improve the quality of the writing. For example, “a possibility of balancing the possibilities of access” and “However, disability is a reason that, regardless of whether one comes from a rich or poor country, with or without racial or creed problems, with or without armed conflicts or diseases that affect the population, cuts across all societies and, therefore, requires answers not only from the point of view of accessibility to education, but also from the promotion of full participation capable of 25 maximizing the possibilities of people in society, regardless of their disability (McNaughton & Bryen, 2007)” and “It is reported that at the present educational . . .” and “guaranteeing equal access it was limited”

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We are writing to first express our gratitude for the insightful comments and constructive suggestions provided by the reviewers. We greatly appreciate the time and effort invested in evaluating our work and offering valuable feedback.

We are pleased to inform you that we have carefully considered each comment and suggestion and have meticulously incorporated all recommended changes into the manuscript. Below you will find the revised manuscript with all changes highlighted in yellow.

We provide next a summary of the revisions made in response to the reviewers' comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It looks like an interesting contribution on the topic of technologies used in the inclusive education - or the education of persons with special educational needs. Although I understand the developmental (and "historical") perspective, references to the old literature (from 90's etc.) and the discussion on outcomes based on such a historical resources doesn't make much sense in this kind of study if we consider the rapid changes on the technological fields during the last decades...

It would be better to use the suitable terminology according to the research topic - in this case, education of "people with special (educational) needs" would sound more appropriate than "people with diabilities".

I see that authors are aware of the limited sample, however, there is much more literature focused on the distance and digital learning, as well as assitive technologies if the research is not driving in such a narrow criteria (many articles published in journals with much wider reach of readers were missed because of searching in "high-impact" databases only; in this kind of journals, the impact is only on the academic field, not on a wider group of professionals in education etc.).

Finally, we would expect the discussion to be better elaborated (in more details, reflecting more resources...).

Author Response

Thank you for revising our manuscript.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has implemented my suggestions and provided a more detailed source list. However, I'm not entirely convinced of their reliability. While I respect the freedom of scientific inquiry, I question the appropriateness of this approach for scholarly articles.

Author Response

We thank you for the comments, feedback and suggestions provided. 

We regret any doubts you may have regarding the reliability of the research. We used standard research methods, guidelines, and borders. Our article emerged because of that standard. We value the diversity of perspectives in academic inquiry. We are committed to addressing any concerns about the suitability of our approach for scholarly articles.

Thank you for revising our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is crucial to distinguish between sources that present original empirical evidence, and those that do not, such as literature reviews. In this manuscript, different types of sources are freely mingled, and sometimes mislabeled. For example, "Thus, a general perspective is given by Yuknis (2016) in whose study he positions the  problem of accessibility to educational goods from the approaches used, surpassing an exclusively material vision. After the documentary review, a framework based on the universal learning design (UDL) is proposed for technology integration into curriculum in distance education courses for students with disabilities." The Yuknis publication is not a study. It is a review of literature, and that literature does not provide evidence that the UDL framework would be effective for technology integration.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English is improved from the first submission.

Author Response

Thank you for revising our manuscript.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf