This study reports on an investigation of barriers that prevent Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) from fully participating in the federal disability and rehabilitation research and development (R&D) agenda. The Delphi technique was used to examine panelists' perceptions on the importance of contextual R&D barriers ensuing from policy/systems issues across 13 different categories. The findings provide information about what Federal research entities (e.g., National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research) and HBCU administrators can do to more effectively address the Section 21 Legislative Mandate of the 1992 Rehabilitation Act Amendments and stimulate competitive R&D participation across the HBCU community. Moore et al. Keywords: historically Black colleges and universities, research capacity building, research and development, federal research entities and disability policyThe Section 21 Mandate of the 1992 Rehabilitation Act Amendments is perhaps one of the most significant pieces of legislation that specifically addresses the unique needs of persons of color served by the state-federal vocational rehabilitation (VR) system. Congress enacted this legislation to respond to findings documenting patterns of inequitable treatment for persons of color (e.g., African Americans) in all junctures of the VR process. Section 21 provided a "legislative mandate" to address these VR system disparities by en-

Hispanic, and individuals from the Other racial category make up 80%, 0.6%, 1.3%, 6%, and 1.4%, respectively, of the universe of veterans. An estimated 15.4% of GWOT, 16.9% of Persian War veterans, and 8.9% of Vietnam War era veterans are African Americans. African American female veterans make up about 20.1% of all women veterans. Remarkably, nearly 1 in every 3, or 33%, of veterans who served in the Persian Gulf War I and GWOT were African American (National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, 2013).Thousands of these veterans have returned home with more than honor, having sustained service-connected physical and/or mental disabilities (Feist

The purpose of this article was to provide a comprehensive overview of the available peer-reviewed and gray literature on assistive technology (AT) access and usage barriers among African Americans with disabilities. Authors completed a historical review (Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2016) of the extant literature on AT and disability public policy mandates by framing the context on AT access and usage disparities among African Americans with disabilities and discussing AT impacts on employment for African Americans. The authors also presented recommendations that might be considered by the field for increasing AT access and usage among African Americans with disabilities. It is clear that AT and associated assistive products are important commodities to the lives of individuals with disabilities in the United States; however, there are historical inequities between African Americans and Whites. As a result of these findings, the authors implore rehabilitation counselors in education and practice to further examine ways to alleviate the AT access and usage gaps for African Americans with disabilities within public policy, vocational rehabilitation service delivery, and institutional infrastructure systems.

This research examined the relationship between race/ethnicity and rehabilitation outcomes as measured by closure status for VR consumers across two different target populations: persons with mental retardation and those who are deaf/hard-of-hearing. The researchers employed a meta-analysis to test the association between the predictor and criterion variables using select Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA-911) driven studies. Data analyzed represent consumer case file information collected during the fiscal years of 1995-1996 through 1997-1998, the time period following passage of the 1992 Rehabilitation Act Amendments and implementation of the resulting Rehabilitation Cultural Diversity Initiative. The meta-analysis identified a significant relationship between race/ethnicity and closure status for each target population. African Americans with hearing loss and those with mental retardation were significantly less likely to achieve closure success when compared to Whites with respective disabilities. These findings and several implications for practice/service and disability policy are discussed.

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