Occupational Safety and Hygiene for Disabled Employees
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Examples for mistaken assumptions:
•
The assumption that a driver who lost his hand can no longer drive (It is possible to add
a joystick handle on the steering wheel, for example).
•
The assumption that a deaf employee cannot identify the warning sign for a fire (Flickering
lights can easily replace the noise of an alarm).
•
The assumption that an employee with a mental disability has a low level of intelligence
(many mentally disabled employees are often more intelligent than the average).
Necessary steps
•
The employer should:
•
Take into consideration the possibility of occupational risks
•
Seriously refer to disability without preliminary assumptions
•
Letting the disabled employee to participate in the risk survey and in the performance
of modifications
•
Consult with well-experienced professional functionaries whenever necessary
•
Perform a re-assessment of risks in the working environment.
Identification of hazards in the workplace is generally done in two complementary ways:
1. A periodical comprehensive risk survey in the workplace
2. Job safety analysis (JSA) in frame of the activities and work stations.
This booklet presents a form that assists in performing the environmental risk survey for
employees with physical and sensory disabilities. This form helps to perform an analysis of the
disabled employee’s activity including a special emphasize on identification of characteristic
risks for mentally disabled employees. These forms, which help with the safety analysis
and risk surveys, enable providing recommendations and referral of the plant for getting
the proper modifications (training services and physical modifications), from the center for
the integration of people with disabilities in the labor market in the Ministry of Economy.
Risk surveys and job safety analyses of the activities should be regularly performed in
every workplace and by the appropriate professionals (preferable by the safety officers or
people who were trained to perform these operations). This chapter presents a format of
environmental risk surveys for workplaces employing disabled people. This survey is additional
to the regular risk survey that should be performed at least once a year in the workplace.
Similarly, the safety analysis of activities, which are presented further below, fit for disabled
employees. The safety analysis according to the presented form or any other way should
be performed in every work station and for every activity that may hold risks, even if the
employees are not disabled.
