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Design Guidelines for Accommodating People with Sensory Impairments in Advanced Manufacturing Environment

Men working in an advanced manufacturing environment.

A trend toward automation and increased computer use in the manufacturing industry is improving the opportunities for people with disabilities to become employed. Use of this equipment changes the physical, sensory, and cognitive requirements of many essential functions in manufacturing. The Work RERC has investigated several manufacturing facilities that employ a significant number of people with disabilities in their production operations. One of the resulting projects for this research is the development of a set of design guidelines.

The goal of this project is to use the data collected from site visits and product literature to develop guidelines for accommodating people with sensory impairments in advanced manufacturing (AM) environments. These guidelines will be useful to manufacturing employers, and Vocational Rehabilitation professionals who seek to create accessible AM environments for employment of people with sensory impairments. The guidelines will also be useful to people with sensory impairments with production experience that are looking for solutions to issues of accessibility in the AM workplace.

Investigations thus far have revealed a variety of accommodations used to improve access in four primary areas of manufacturing including; tool utilization, machine operation, environmental conditions, and information transfer. The design guidelines will include pictures and descriptive text to demonstrate how these areas can be made more accessible for use by people with sensory impairments. Furthermore, information will be provided that explains the use of relevant assistive technology (AT). In this way, people who are familiar with AT can see how these devices may be used to help people with sensory impairments accomplish a variety of manufacturing tasks.

Although this first version of the design guideline will focus on accommodating people with sensory impairments, the Work RERC is interested in gathering any information that might be useful in accommodating people with any form of disability in an AM environment. Anyone with experience in making the AM environment more accessible is invited to contact the guideline developer, Xiaoyi (pronounced SHAO-yee) or the project manager, Scott Haynes, with suggestions and information about current accommodations. Interested parties are invited to participate in our upcoming webcast, “Accommodating Production or Distribution Workers” February 14, 2008. That webcast will include a demonstration of the design guidelines being developed. For more information about participating in that webcast, please visit www.workrerc.org/events.php. For more information about this development project or to suggest additions to the design guidelines, please contact either:

Contact

Xiaoyi Ye
Guideline Developer
xye@gatech.edu

Scott Haynes, MBME
Research Engineer II
Project Manager
scott.haynes@coa.gatech.edu