[Taken from Introduction] The original intentions of the study reported here were modest: to revise and up-date a 1993 fifteen country study of disability employment policies, legislation and services; and to extend coverage to 18 countries and so include all member states of the European Union, in addition to Australia, Canada and the USA. The results are quite different. The scale of the policy developments and changes since 1993 took the project far beyond a mere up-dating of statistics and revision of details of existing measures. Many country chapters have been radically rewritten to take account of new policy dimensions. Improved access to evaluative material in several countries has introduced a critical edge to an essentially descriptive source book of policy measures.