Promoting better jobs for workers with disabilities
News release - 03.12.2004
The Agency has produced a new factsheet on the workplace safety of people with disabilities. It looks at a key area concerning the employment of workers with disabilities - how to ensure safety and health, while avoiding discrimination.
The Agency has produced a new factsheet on the workplace safety of people with disabilities. It looks at a key area concerning the employment of workers with disabilities - how to ensure safety and health, while avoiding discrimination.
The factsheet underlines the rights of people with disabilities to both a fair and safe workplace. It explains how a practical application of anti-discrimination legislation and health and safety legislation can benefit both the worker and employer.
Above all it provides user-friendly and practical guidance on how the responsibilities of equality legislation can tie in with health and safety responsibilities. This includes:
- Explaining how both incorporate the principal of adapting work and workplaces to people, in order to provide accessible and safe employment for disabled people.
- A guide to a disability-sensitive risk assessment.
- A checklist on how to provide a safe workplace for disabled workers, which looks at: working environment; signposting; communication; work organisation and duties; working hours; training and supervision; promotion and transfer, and emergency procedures.
Finally, while employers have legal duties to take action, this factsheet shows how compliance will have a positive benefit for employers, as a workplace that is accessible and safe for people with disabilities is also safer and more accessible for all employees, clients and visitors.
The Director of the Agency Hans-Horst Konkolewsky said ‘Europe needs to employ an increasingly diverse workforce, and this factsheet provides practical support towards this objective. We hope it will stimulate workplaces to take positive actions, and that this will lead to better jobs for workers with disabilities.’
END
Further information
Press contacts:
Andrew Smith, e-mail: smith@osha.europa.eu, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, Tel: +34 94 479 5733 or
Sarah Copsey, e-mail: copsey@osha.europa.eu, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, Tel: +34 94 479 4378
Other enquiries:
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, Gran Via 33, E-48009 Bilbao, Spain, email: information@osha.europa.eu, fax: +34 94 479 4383.
Notes to editors
- The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work was set up by the European Union to help meet the information needs in the field of occupational safety and health. Based in Bilbao, Spain, the Agency aims to improve the lives of people at work by stimulating the flow of technical, scientific and economic information between all those involved in occupational safety and health issues.
- The Agency produced the factsheet as a result of activities it carried out during the European Year of People with Disabilities 2003. The Agency website also has a special section devoted to disability issues that contains a database of links to good practice information http://europe.osha.europa.eu/good_practice/person/disability/
- Factsheet No 53: Ensuring the health and safety of workers with disabilities is available in 20 languages and can be downloaded free of charge at: http://agency.osha.europa.eu/publications/factsheets/53/en/index.htm
