ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes that rehabilitation engineering must be different since it is a disjointed discipline. Rehabilitation engineering can take the form of highly academic research, embracing sophisticated concepts in medicine and engineering to the design of simple devices utilized by a disabled child in a special education classroom. The book presents demographic data to outline the problem of disability in sharper detail relative to absolute numbers. It examines the assessment of adaptive technology and its applicability to severely disabled persons in a host of environments. It analyses the probability of actual use of rehabilitation technology by the very persons it is designed to assist.
