What is it about?
Students with learning disabilities can benefit greatly from academic and assistive technologies, but only if they accept and use them. This study followed 400 Saudi university students with formally identified learning disabilities, surveying them twice, six weeks apart. It examined how their attitudes toward their own disability and their social problem-solving skills relate to how useful and easy they find technology, and to whether they intend to use it.
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Why is it important?
Students who found technology easy to use also saw it as more useful, and both beliefs went hand in hand with a stronger intention to use it. More positive disability-related attitudes at the first survey were linked to more favourable views of technology six weeks later. University support services could therefore pair technology training with work on how students view their disability. Evidence on this question from non-Western universities has been scarce.
Perspectives
This study is part of my wider work on students with disabilities in Saudi higher education. I hope it encourages universities to look beyond the technology itself and pay attention to how students see their own disability, because that seems to shape whether they embrace the tools designed to help them.
Prof Nizar H Bagadood
Umm Al-Qura University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cross-time associations among technology acceptance, disability-related attitudes, and social problem-solving in university students with learning disabilities, Scientific Reports, September 2026, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-72314-3.
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