Perceptions, challenges, and innovations in educational rehabilitation for students with intellectual disabilities in Saudi Arabia

This study evaluated stakeholder perceptions, implementation barriers, and innovation readiness in educational rehabilitation programs for students with intellectual disabilities in Saudi Arabia. A quantitative cross-sectional design was employed using a structured 30-item questionnaire administered to 298 participants, including educators, administrators, students, and rehabilitation-related stakeholders. The instrument comprised three domains: Awareness and Perception, Barriers to Effective Educational Rehabilitation, and Innovations and Future Directions. Internal consistency was strong across all domains, with Cronbach’s alpha values of 0.856, 0.849, and 0.836, respectively. Descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, and one-way ANOVA were used to examine response patterns and group differences. The findings revealed statistically significant variation among stakeholder groups, indicating differences in awareness, confidence, and perceived implementation capacity. Administrators reported higher program awareness, whereas educators identified practical constraints related to teacher preparation, resource availability, assistive technology access, and classroom-level implementation. Social stigma, financial limitations, weak school–rehabilitation collaboration, and limited family engagement emerged as major barriers. Although participants recognised the potential of personalised learning plans, assistive technologies, virtual learning environments, augmented reality, educational applications, job-readiness training, and artificial intelligence-supported learning, lower innovation-domain mean scores indicated limited implementation readiness. The findings suggest that effective rehabilitation requires integrated policy implementation, sustained professional development, equitable resource allocation, technical infrastructure, culturally appropriate Arabic-language digital resources, and stronger inter-sectoral collaboration. Future research should directly include students’ voices and evaluate long-term rehabilitation outcomes across Saudi educational settings. Survey scales showed strong reliability, with α values from 0.836 to 0.856. Stakeholder groups differed significantly in rehabilitation perceptions. Key barriers included stigma, resources, training, and weak collaboration. Participants valued AR, virtual learning, assistive tech, and AI tools. Innovation readiness remained limited despite support for rehabilitation.