Disability and rehabilitation research and practices have traditionally aimed at creating self-sufficiency and equal opportunities among individuals with disability. The need and benefits of such initiatives are important, particularly with the increasing influx of disabled individuals into the work force. It has become necessary focus on rehabilitating the disabled and special populations at the work place and to do it in an economically viable manner without adversely affecting productivity. Work standards have traditionally served as a reliable means of establishing consistent data on activity and job completion times for comparative, control, or remuneration purposes. However, with the changing demographics it is necessary that the standard times and the work measurement data developed for healthy population be tailored to fit the requirements of special populations. This experimental study aimed at providing modifiers to elemental tasks when performed by individuals with finger disabilities. These modifiers should provide the management with information necessary to integrate the disabled into the workforce. The study reported here simulated three kinds of finger disabilities while performing various assembly-disassembly tasks. Results indicated that there was a significant increase in performance times with disabilities, both at the elemental level and at the higher level. While the elemental time with disabilities increased by as much as 150%, overall times with disabilities increased by as much as 108%. Based on the results of the experimental simulation, generalized modifiers for PMTS tasks were developed in order to estimate performance times for individuals with finger disabilities
