We know that work is recognized as a central component of life for individuals with and without disabilities. It yields many physical and psychological benefits to the individual while simultaneously contributing numerous benefits to society. Lawmakers have enacted a plethora of laws designed to prevent discrimination, provide incentives for employers to hire individuals with disabilities, and facilitate job training/career preparation. Assistive technology figures prominently in disability employment law as a critical strategy for gaining access and supporting employment and upward mobility in the workplace. However, little systematic effort has been devoted to examining assistive technology use and outcomes as they relate to the employment of individuals with disabilities. The purpose of this article is to articulate a series of issues that permeate assistive technology outcome measurement in employment settings and subsequently affect the use of research knowledge for federal and state policy makers. For each issue, the authors pose three questions for critical analysis: Does the law compel the provision of assistive technology? Does outcome data play any part in the operation of the law? When it does, what kind of data would be useful to collect and where could it be found? Finally, the authors provide a brief glimpse of the current and future research efforts concerning the RSA-911 database. The recent database summaries exemplify the importance of such a national data collection system for informing federal policy, particularly concerning the contributions of assistive technology device use and services on improving the employment of individuals with disabilities.

Technology has long been a key component of rehabilitation. One needs only to reflect on the widely held notion of "rehabilitation" as physical rehabilitation, involving treatment and training after illness or injury, to appreciate the long and implicit relationship between these two subjects.The term assistive technology (AT) was coined in the Technology-Related Assistance for Individuals With Disabilities Act of 1988 (P.L. 100-407), but the concept, under a variety of names or under no particular name at all, long predates that legislation. Elsewhere in this book is discussed the shift in thinking about technology from the medical to the social model. Suffice it to say here that although wheelchairs, hearing aids, Braille watches, and other traditional devices were often provided under medical auspices, their function as AT devices is now clear and indisputable. It is not the source of a device or the affiliations of a third-party funder that defines its nature as AT. The device's function does that.Even within rehabilitation programs the prevalence of the medical model left little room for consumer choice in services or for consumer involvement in decision making regarding the extent and content of those services. It was not until the emergence of the independent-living movement in the 1960s and its first statutory embodiment in 1973 (Rehabilitation Act of 1973, P.L. 93-1 12) that the right of consumers to have choice in services and devices began to gain legitimacy and attention.