Evidence-Based Practice in Workplace Accommodations

• Published in: Work (Reading, Mass.) Mass.), 2006, Vol.27 (4), p.329-332
• Main Authors: Sanford, Jon A., Milchus, Karen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ergonomics; Evidence-Based Medicine; Handicapped accessibility; Human resource management; Humans; People with disabilities; Work environment; Workers with disabilities; Workplace
• ISSN: 1051-9815; 1875-9270
• DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2006-00577

Approximately 18.5 million working-age adults with disabilities have difficulty finding employment, remaining employed or working in their preferred profession. Yet, while the workplace accommodations can enable people with disabilities to participate in the workforce, there is little evidence with which to inform the practice of assessing the need for and providing the associative technologies and environmental modification that would facilitate work. In fact, workplace accommodation is better described as a field that is driven by practice-based evidence rather than the other way around. The field is relatively immature; dominated, out of necessity, by practice. Descriptive studies of the prevalence of various types of accomodation, outcomes studies of the efficacy and effectiveness of accomodations for specific populations, valid and reliable assessment methods, and studies that identify information needs for making decisions about appropriate accomodations, including telework as an accommodation, are generally lacking. This absence of an empirical evidence base has, often times, resulted in unnecessary reinventing-of-wheels, and perhaps over reliance on unproven or ineffective ones in the practice of workplace accommodation.