Cost-effectiveness analysis based on the ICF can provide powerful economic evidence for how best to allocate existing funding for AT systems. We can identify three particular scenarios in which clear recommendations can be made. In addition, cost-effectiveness analysis provides a means to identify how society can comply with its obligation towards all its members in the most cost-effective way, using a combination of AT and UD.

This article considers the findings of three different research studies on one juvenile justice intervention. In 2015, Juvenile Justice New South Wales received three different research findings on the same programme, the Intensive Supervision Program (ISP). The Bureau of Crime Statistics Research (BOCSAR) provided a report on the reoffending rates of those young people who underwent the programme. A team of researchers from Western Sydney University produced a report in two parts: first, a qualitative study that told the story of the young people’s path towards desistance, and second, a related economic analysis plotting the possible economic benefits to society of this programme producing desistance in participants. It is a rare situation to have three such different research reports on the same programme so this article will consider the wider implications of this and how to best judge whether a criminal justice intervention is successful and worth pursuing.

This chapter uses a person-centred approach to develop an inclusive society and related economic analyses. It develops a new kind of cost-effectiveness analysis that can encompass individual situations. To do so, this chapter uses the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in a novel way. Traditionally, people with disabilities have been excluded from environments and activities by exclusionary design practices and limited access to recent technological developments. The cost of including people with disabilities has thus been conceptualised in terms of the additional expenses for specialized technologies and modified environments. However, little attention has been given to the costs and outcomes of the existing exclusionary design practices and possible wastage of resources. Building on previous work, this chapter uses the ICF’s concepts of activities and participation to identify effectiveness, and the ICF’s concepts of environmental factors to identify the relevant costs. Such a cost-effectiveness analysis compares a particular person’s current situation, which includes providing the currently available assistive technology (AT) in an exclusionary environment, with a hypothetical optimal situation. This optimal situation is conceptualized within the framework of current technological possibilities and the person’s individual requirements. It includes the following two sub-situations: one in which a person is provided with an optimal AT system in the existing exclusionary environment and another in a universally designed environment with a corresponding AT system. The chapter uses an illustrative case to compare activities and participation achieved in both situations, and calculates the real costs that would result in an Australian town.

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Universal Design and the Built Environment (RERC-UD), a federally funded research center located in The University at Buffalo, hosted a series of State of the Science (SOS) Activities in 2008. The SOS activities generated a large number of papers on both research and the practice of universal design in community infrastructures, public buildings, and housing. This Ebook contains a selected group of these papers that provide a survey of notable developments in the field, reflections on how research and practice can be advanced further, and propose an agenda for the near future. It is hoped that the book will be found useful for researchers, students and practitioners in this field.