Approaches to providing disability and employment information

Recent UK government initiatives have focused on the high level of unemployment within the disabled population and the overall effects this is having on the economy. To reduce this several branches of the government have introduced new programmes to support working age people with disabilities in the workplace. One area that has gained a great deal of attention is that of vocational rehabilitation and improving the return to work process. The overall aims of this thesis were to identify the stakeholders in the return to work process and examine their disability and employment information needs. [Continues.

Reasonable adjustments: collecting user experiences for a "solutions database"

The Disability Discrimination Act (1995) states that employers must make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the workplace for employees with disabilities. To help provide advice on this subject a project was undertaken to build a database of work related ‘solutions’ that would supply information to those that support people with disabilities about their potential work related needs. This paper presents one of a series of studies designed to determine the information requirements that would assist people with disabilities to join or rejoin the workforce

AbilityMatch - building a disability management system

Results from preliminary studies have indicated that locating appropriate information on how to accommodate people with disabilities in the workplace can be a difficult and time consuming task. To help improve this situation research is being conducted to contribute to a comprehensive computer system for managing disabilities in the workplace. This is being done by using an integrated assessment of a person’s abilities combined with the requirements of a job to then identify workplace solutions or advice on how to overcome barriers, ultimately working towards the creation of an expert system of reasonable accommodations. This paper outlines the ongoing development of a solutions database for an existing assessment system, AbilityMatch