The change in emphasis from people to person: introduction to the special issue on Assistive Technology

In the last century, our global focus was on tackling such mass population problems as the containment of contagious diseases and infection, sanitation, the construction of bridges and highways, and the implementation of public education. While education is in continuous need of updating and improvement, while there is much work and repair needing to be done to our physical infrastructure, and there are disease processes still to be understood and controlled, we have made tremendous strides in conquering these massive, population-based, challenges. Today, we have a reasonably good service infrastructure and set of public policies and legislation internationally to protect and promote our health, safety, and education. As I have attempted to depict in ®gure 1, the 20th century focus was on people and their needs as a population. Often, each country had a fairly discrete population sharing a culture and language diVerent from many other countries. The individuals comprising any given country’s population were rarely the focus of attention, nor were products or devices uniquely shaped or crafted to ®t individual needs and preferences. In the 20th century, it was common to have, say, one style of wheelchair prescribed for many people. Options and choices in wheelchairs and other assistive technologies, if they existed at all, were certainly not vast. And to better contain and control disease and disability, society decreed that people had to be treated and managed by healthcare providers. Services for people with disabilities and chronic health conditions, thus, came under the purview of medical professionals who, in keeping with their training, viewed disability against the normal curve of the state of the mass population’s health and, thus, as a health problem which required treatment and cure.