Practice-Oriented Safety Procedures in Work Environment with Visually and Hearing Impaired Colleagues

Abstract

In work places where there are hearing and visually impaired col-leagues, there are safety related issues that are not present in work environment where there are only hearing and sighted employees. For example all the premises and safe routes within have to be precisely memorised by all employees in case there is an emergency during the work day. In an ordinary work place annual safety rehearsals and fire drills are enough to remind all workers about the safe routes and procedures in an emergency, but for the visually and hearing impaired employees this is not enough, but for the dual-sensory impaired employee it might prove difficult just to realise what room he/she is in at a particular moment. This procedure is made easier by so-called body mapping, i.e. drawing a simplified floor plan of the room on the back or on the back of the hand of the worker [1, pp.136-138]. The body map includes the exits, the emergency exit should there be any, and safe routes to the exits. Sometimes, tactile maps can be provided for the same purpose too [2]. Another issue related to fire alarms is that the hearing impaired workers might not be aware of the fire alarm sound. Thus the information must be relayed to the colleagues using other methods. Currently, there is a specialised touch-based social quick message system [3], which is used in some international deafblind meetings and conferences, and it is also taught to hotel staff in venues of Finnish Deafblind Association AGMs.