This study aimed to examine the impact of assistive technology (AT) on the reading and writing performance and the social life of students with visual impairments (VI). Seventeen studies carried out between 2000 and 2019 were reviewed. Results showed that using the advanced features of AT devices such as braille notetakers and Mountbatten Brailler helped developing reading and writing skills of students with VI through revising and editing writing. Also, the use of mainstream devices like laptops and cell phones with screen readers promoted social interaction because of portability and inconspicuousness. Results were classified according to the common characteristics of the findings of these studies, such as the advantages and disadvantages of AT. The advantages of AT were improved reading and writing skills, increased access to the Internet, and better developed social lives. Barriers that impacted on the use of AT were cost of equipment and a lack of training.

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Prosocial behaviors are positive social behaviors that benefit others. Deprivation is an observable and provable measure of absence in one’s social living standards depending on the society or country to which they belong. The present study examines levels of and correlations between prosocial skills and deprivation in Teachers of Students with Visual Impairment student (TVIs). Environmental Deprivation Scale for Teachers was developed by the researchers with 751 teacher participants. As one of the quantitative research methods, this descriptive study was conducted using correlation and screening to examine the relationship between two or more variables and obtain clues about cause and effect. 68 TVIs in Turkey and 73 TVIs in the USA participated in our web-based scale. The participants were also asked an open-ended question about the reason(s) for choosing their profession. The answers were analyzed, and themes and sub-themes were created. The study's main conclusion is that the American TVIs have higher levels of prosocial skills and lower levels of deprivation. In addition, there is a positive and significant relationship between prosocial skills and deprivation. The reasons teachers choose their profession fell under four themes and eight sub-themes for the American TVIs and six themes and nine sub-themes for the Turkish ones. Several factors, such as the differences in the education systems of the two countries and the levels of development, may impact prosocial skills and deprivation levels.

Screen readers enable people with visual impairment (VI) to have equal access to written information both on computers and smartphones. This paper presents an overview of screen readers that allow users with VI read the text materials and describe images on the computer screen by using a special software program to synthesize as speech. We study three aspects of the screen readers in terms of their accessibility. First, we invest on developing websites, apps, and software programs by following web content accessibility guidelines to ensure accessibility. We than conduct research on compatibility of the websites, apps, and software programs with screen readers. Last, we inform about descriptions of the images by creating alternative texts.