this book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th international conference on computers helping people with special needs, icchp 2002, held in linz, austria in july 2002.the 155 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected. the papers evaluate how various fields in computer science can contribute to helping people with various kinds of disabilities. among the technical fields evaluated are information systems, information society, computer-assisted education, human-computer interaction, interface design, virtual reality, internet applications, mobile computing, assistive technology, communication technology, multimedia, display technology, haptic copmuting, audio interfaces, and societal and administrative issues.