Two Policies, One Learner: A Comparative Directed Content Analysis of Policy Coherence between Digital-Education and Special-Education Frameworks for Learners with Disabilities in Malaysia and Indonesia

Abstract

Inclusive education and digital transformation now sit side by side in the education policy of many middle-income states, yet the two agendas are seldom read together. This paper reports a directed qualitative content analysis of how the special-education and digital-education frameworks of Malaysia and Indonesia address learners with disabilities, and of whether the two streams cohere around digital accessibility and assistive technology. Policy texts were coded against a framework drawn from Universal Design for Learning, General Comment No. 4 on the right to inclusive education, the levels of the digital divide, and the study of policy coherence. Each country identifies disability through a medical or administrative process and states accommodation as a duty it then qualifies. Where digital accessibility is named as a material entitlement it sits within the special-education stream, unreached by the digital reform that will decide whether it is met. On every dimension examined, the two streams run in parallel rather than in synergy.