Revisión y evaluación de aplicaciones educativas para personas con discapacidad intelectual

Abstract

The access to technology in education is essential for skills development of people with intellectual disabilities, so it is necessary to identify and evaluate the quality of special education applications. The objective of this study was to classify and evaluate the quality of educational applications for autism, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy. A systematic search was performed in the Ecuadorian Apple App Store between May and August 2017. The application data were extracted by application name, developer, disability, purpose, cost, functionality, number of downloads, user ratings and number of user ratings. The inclusion criteria for applications were: (1) Spanish language; (2) at no cost; (3) availability in the Ecuadorian Apple App Store; and (4) categories: “Education,” “Children,” and “Games.” A group of testers reviewed and rated the quality of 44 applications using the Mobile Apps Rating Scale (MARS). As a result of the present research, a list of 44 special education mobile applications was obtained, of which 16 had a score higher than 4, which means that they had acceptable quality. For instance, Eureka 1 was the best-rated application with 4.68; due to the high scores in the categories of aesthetics and engagement. The results of this research can help therapists and parents to select applications for people with intellectual disabilities avoiding a confusing search, due to the lack of categorizations according to the type of disability and the quality of applications in stores.