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Ergonomics and workplace adaptation to

people with disabilities
ARTICLE in WORK DECEMBER 2013
Impact Factor: 0.52 DOI: 10.3233/WOR-131814 Source: PubMed

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Bruno Guimares
Federal University of Santa Catarina
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Work 50 (2015) 607609

DOI 10.3233/WOR-152013
IOS Press

Sounding Board

Ergonomics and workplace adaptation to

people with disabilities
Bruno Maia de Guimares
Federal University of Pernambuco, Rua da Amizade, 109, apto: 703, Graas, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil
Tel.: +55 81 87955755; Zip code: 52011-260; E-mail: bmguimaraes@hotmail.com

Received /Accepted: 25 July 2012

1. Introduction
People with disabilities (PD) account for about 15%
of the world population, or one billion people [1].
Within this context, the inclusion of this population
in the social-labor environment has been widely discussed and encouraged by various laws.
Some countries stipulate quotas for the employment of disabled people in public and private sectors.
Germany has a quota of 5% for the employment of
severely disabled employees in firms employing more
than 20 people. Turkey has a 3% quota for firms with
more than 50 workers [1]. Whereas in Brazil, laws establish a quota of 20% for public sector enterprises and
of 2% to 5% for private companies with over 100 employees.
Despite the attempts to include people with disabilities at work, the number of such people seeking employment and of those receiving job opportunities remains low. Data from several countries show that employment rates of PD are smaller than the general population [1]. A recent study showed that in 27 countries
working-age persons with disabilities, on average, their
employment rate, at 44%, was over half that for persons without disability (75%) [2].
Several researches indicate that the main difficulties faced by persons with disabilities to enter the
workplace are: the lack of adequate education and
training [3,4], work experience [5], misconceptions
about the ability of people with disabilities to per-

form Jobs [6,7] and belief that people with disabilities are less productive than their non-disabled counterparts [8].
Thus, it is verified that job accommodation to people
with disabilities is a tough task that has encountered
some difficulties, such as the lack of offering professional training to PD, the presence of architectural and
organizational barriers and discrimination regarding a
PDs functional potential. Thus, it is essential to understand the interaction between PD and the elements of
the work system.

2. Importance of ergonomics
The implementation of ergonomics for the labor inclusion of people with disabilities has not a special or
different focus to other applications; it will always look
to adapt work to the characteristics of people.
To ensure adequate labor inclusion of disabled people, Chi [9] mentions that an accurate and detailed
evaluation should take place, focusing on two important aspects, one concerning the individual evaluation,
which consists in ones interest in the work, ones skills
and disabilities which could affect the performance on
the jobs available; and another one based on the ergonomic aspects, such as job demands and the characteristics of the tasks.
Therefore, there is a need to compare the demands
of the job and the PDs capabilities. The goal is that the

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B.M. de Guimares / Ergonomics and workplace adaptation to people with disabilities

demands of work do not exceed the functional capacities of the worker with a disability and that the workplace is accessible and safe. According to Tortosa [10],
PDs jobs should allow or facilitate the development of
their individual skills and abilities, while also preventing the progression of their existing deficiencies and/or
the emergence of new ones. Thus, this avoids the PD
having to make a great effort to adapt to the work or
the work falling far short of their professional qualifications [11].
According to Kumar [12], the process of fitting the
job through adjustment or modification to maximize
worker capability is ergonomics and parallel to the
process of disability rehabilitation of the medical and
health model. The ergonomic principle of enhancing
efficiency and effectiveness is complimentary to the
equalization of opportunity which seeks to enhance
environmental accessibility to people with disabilities
through reduction in demand.
Determining reasonable accommodations through
the use of ergonomics is an important step in providing
an environment of inclusion at the workplace for individuals with physical or mental disabilities. A successful work transition will require a disability-sensitive
workplace free of physical, mental, and attitudinal barriers thus allowing an inclusive environment for all
workers [13].
Thus, ergonomics is indispensable, since the adjustments to the job can be adequately performed through
the knowledge of the task, of the physical, intellectual
and organizational demands of the jobs and the determination of the functional capabilities of the disabled
worker [14]. Therefore, the use of ergonomic principles has a fundamental role to increase the participation of individuals with disabilities at work.

3. Workplace accommodation
Workplace accommodations are individualized solutions that enable people with disabilities to carry
out work tasks and be more productive. Examples of
reasonable accommodations include ensuring recruitment and selection procedures are accessible to all,
adapting the working environment, providing assistive
devices, modifying working schedules, redistributing
non-essential tasks to other workers, and so. Thus, implementing workplace accommodations is a vital tool
for increasing job employment for individuals with disabilities.
However, according to Williams et al. [15], the specific types of workplace accommodations commonly

used by each kind of people with disabilities were: for

persons with maintaining body position difficulties, the
most common type was the use of ergonomic/custom
designed workstations to better position the work as
accommodation; the types of commonly identified accommodations for difficulty moving around were accessible transportation; for people who had manipulation difficulties, the most common accommodation
was use of a buddy system to help with more physically demanding tasks; for people who had trouble
coordinating movements, the most-used accommodations were voice recognition systems; accommodations
in the workplace commonly used to overcome vision
deficits were screen reading software and accommodations used in the workplace to compensate for hearing
limitations consisted of hearing aids.
One of the main concerns of employers to make
adjustments for the PD employees at work concerns
the costs and benefits received. However, Schartz et
al. [16] published the results of 259 companies that had
made adaptations of the job for PD and found that in
the first year after the accommodation, 49.4% of the
employers said they had not spent anything on adaptations. As to the others, the average cost in the first
year was $600. Additionally, the estimates for the direct benefits obtained, such as, for example, increased
productivity and a decrease in absenteeism from 0 to
$116,000, the average being $1,000.
In the study by Solovieta et al. [17,18], the main
benefits obtained by companies based on job accommodation to individuals with disabilities were: retaining skilled workers, an increase in worker productivity,
eliminating the costs of training new employees, improving relations between workers, and an increase in
the morale and general productivity of the company.
Thus, job accommodation to people with disabilities may vary both in the complexity of each case and
in the resources needed. Consequently, planning for
each adaptation also varies in time, effort and the number and type of professionals involved, it being important for these to include physiotherapists, occupational
therapists, doctors, safety at work engineers, architects,
designers and other professionals. Moreover, the adaptation process should involve the people affected (the
PD, the employer and co-workers) as active participants in obtaining a good result.

4. Conclusions
Thereby, it is clear that the adjustments of the workplace can be made through the knowledge of the tasks,

B.M. de Guimares / Ergonomics and workplace adaptation to people with disabilities

the physical, intellectual and organizational demands

of the jobs and the functional abilities of the worker
with disabilities. For this, the integration of a multidisciplinary team, involving the areas of occupational
safety and ergonomics to enable the survey, data analysis and physical, intellectual and organizational recommendations for the job, is important.
However, it is important to note that there is no specific adjustment, in other words, predetermined adjustments for each type of disability, because each situation is different from one another. Each workstation has its own characteristics, as do the individuals
with disabilities, since even with similar disabilities,
each worker may have different functional capabilities.
Their skills vary with the level of injury, treatments,
education, training and previous experience.

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]
[11]

[12]

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