Advancements in AI revolutionize learning, automate tasks, and provide insights. During COVID-19, AI connected educators and learners globally, but special education suffered. This chapter aims to define disabilities, explore AI-based diagnosis tools, and envision personalized learning and assistive technology for inclusive education. The lack of affordable and convenient assistive devices and technology combined with taboos stemming from deeply ingrained misconceptions and prejudices, perpetuating stereotypes and marginalizing individuals with disabilities often forces them to live a life devoid of the proper means to engage in schooling for the purpose of attaining an independent lifestyle. The primary objective of the chapter is to define various types of disabilities and consider various AI-based tools for early disability diagnosis, while also looking to the future with personalized learning and AI-based assistive technologies, assisting both learners and educators in achieving the highest level of education.
Top1.0 Introduction
In the past decade, technology infused with AI has significantly left its imprint on our day-to-day lives, transforming various industries, and the education sector is no exception. Especially after the COVID-19 outbreak, AI-powered educational tools have been successfully proving their potential to revolutionize ways of learning by personalizing the learning experience, automating administrative tasks, and providing data-driven insights. With the implementation of distance learning solutions, on the one hand, AI-based tools helped connect millions of educators as well as learners worldwide, but, on the other hand, it proved to be a challenging situation for users with any kind of disability who relied on special education.
Special education refers to the guidance of youngsters who deviate from what is considered typical in terms of their social, cognitive, or physical development to the extent that they need modifications to customary educational practices. It serves all children, including those with psychological, cognitive, or behavioural impairments, learning disabilities, visual, hearing, or speech impairments, emotional or cognitive impairments, gifted students with exceptional academic abilities, and those with orthopaedic or neurological disorders as defined by Encyclopedia Britannica (2023). According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2022), under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), In 2020–21, 7.2 million kids between the ages of 3 and 21 got special education assistance. According to the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs Disability (2023), it is estimated that there are 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide, or around 15% of the total population, forming the largest minority in the world. The percentage breakdown of IDEA-eligible students aged between 3 and 21 by selected disability type for the academic year 2020–21 has been represented in Figure 1, as represented by the U.S. Department of Education (2021).
Figure 1. Percentage distribution of students aged 3 to 21 who receive IDEA services according to a particular impairment type: The academic year 2020–21
Additionally, according to the Department of Economic and Social Affairs Disability (2023) of United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization - UNESCO, in impoverished countries, 90% of handicapped children seldom go to school. While technology continues to make learning solutions and the workplace more adoptable and thereby accessible, and multiple research projects are going on to make education more inclusive and accessible to everyone, irrespective of their disabilities, the barrier to education is even more challenging to navigate for differently abled individuals in developing countries. The lack of affordable and convenient assistive tools and technology combined with taboos stemming from deeply ingrained misconceptions and prejudices, perpetuating stereotypes, and marginalizing individuals with disabilities often forces them to live a life devoid of the proper means to engage in schooling for the purpose of attaining an independent lifestyle. Moreover, similar struggles are also encountered by the family members of a differently-abled individual, and it is important to address their issues as well to better understand the ways of helping them with the help of AI.