The Ergonomics as a Facilitator for the Inclusion of Disabled Workers in Institutional Spaces

Commentary

Mentioned in the preface of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we have understood and taken the concept of “disability” as an evolving concept as a result from the interaction between people with disabilities and attitudinal and environmental barriers that prevent them from exercising their autonomy in full. The relevant challenge to this area of knowledge bears a theoretical and methodological need, as well as public policies to face the contemporary matters concerning the workers’ health. According to the 2010 Census made by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), there are 45,6 million people declared to have some kind of disability representing 23,9% of the entire Brazilian population. The relationship in this universe between health and work are a stage for multiple situations of the daily working life featured by many different forms of management, relationships and forms of contracts, which at all times are reflected in the living, illness and death of workers [1, 2]. Article 23 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that: "Everyone has the right to work, to the free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” Commentary Since 2001 Federal Government of Brazil has been making adjustments on the assessment of people with disabilities in order to modify the way they are seen by moving from a traditional biomedical approach into abiopsychosocial model, whereby assessment is based on the functionalities performed by each person of mainstream group of disability and on his/her abilities to overcome barriers. Therefore, there is an attempt to change paradigms from a Minority Model to a current Universal Model replacing a care policy with a health policy instead. To Ergonomics, this functionality refers to the person's ability to interact with his/her environment, in this case the workplace. Thus the ergonomics contributes to a new representation addressing the working processes and seeking solutions to facilitate the worker's interaction with full mobility, accessibility, safety, autonomy and inclusion in the working world [3]. According to the philosopher Kant, the term autonomy is very comprehensive as defined in his studies Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).The Autonomy of the Will, the Rational Will confers dignity to the rational being.To Kant, the Autonomy of the Will is the supreme principle of morality [4].

Bioinformatics & Proteomics Open Access Journal

Freedom in its most different forms, including the freedom to come and go and make their choices is an essential right to all individuals, and should be accorded for all people with disabilities [5]. The worker’s autonomy contributes to his social identity, his representation in the working world. This is the proposal for a fair and ethical society and to the full exercise of citizenship [6, 7, 8]. This paper is designed to reflect from the viewpoint of disabled worker on the ergonomics in the institutionalized working environment.It is also part of the scope to observe in accordance with data published, the profile of Brazilian workers with disabilities and conduct a critical study on the need for ergonomics design in the workplace by considering Ethics as a cross-cutting theme to the suggested approach in a social and economic context. It is believed that the study can contribute to enhance a universe we think is broad but not inviolable, in which there is a clear and justified need for revealing the deficiencies in this field.