JOB-ACCESS: TELEWORKING AT HOME AND KEEPING PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES IN THE WORKFORCE

Philippe Mabilleau, Ph.D. Eng.,
Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering,
Sherbrooke University, Québec, CanadaDale Szlamkowicz, Occupational Therapist,
Centre de Réadaptation
Lucie-Bruneau, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Danielle Massé, TECSO Inc., Laval,Québec, Canada

Web Posted on: December 12, 1997

Introduction

Changes currently taking place in office automation in general and in telecommunications in particular are leading more and more workers to use a mobile or home office. This boom in home telework, coupled with the growing number of independent or self- employed workers, has led to the development of new methods of workplace organization.

How will persons with disabilities integrate into this world of work at home? Will this new way of working create additional obstacles for these workers or will it remove or lessen others? Is their integration into the workplace environment compromised by these developments? These are just some of the questions that must be answered in order to provide this group with a suitable strategy for positioning themselves in the labor market.

Actually, at a time when persons with disabilities are just beginning to be accepted and recognized in the workplace, doesn't the telework revolution represent a danger to them of being forgotten by their colleagues (out of sight, out of mind)? Will feelings of isolation, already reported by many home teleworkers, be a major stumbling block for persons whose mobility is restricted and for whom work is a primary source of social interaction? These are some of the reasons why telework can be perceived as a risk for these individuals. We might even predict that if this way of working became the norm, part of the labor market would become less accessible to persons with disabilities because of their lack of visibility.

On the other hand, teleworking at home could be an attractive solution for people who have difficulty making the trip to and from the workplace or who need a work schedule that is tailored to their needs, allowing for such things as flexible rest periods. Teleworking at home would then be a way of helping certain people stay in the workforce, especially those with a degenerative disease. Moreover, by reducing the time and stress associated with commuting, telework may well enhance workers' quality of life and give them more time for their own activities.

The JOB-ACCESS project arose from the need to analyze both the positive and negative effects that teleworking at home may have on persons with disabilities.

JOB-ACCESS: A pilot study

JOB-ACCESS is a case-study based research project being carried out within the Canadian public service. It involves employees in different federal government departments, all of whom work in jobs that require them to use a computer connected to a network. The research question that this study hopes to answer is: To what extent and under which conditions is telework a viable option for persons with disabilities? In addition to this main objective, a number of additional aspects will be evaluated within JOB-ACCESS, such as the choice of adaptive and telecommunications equipment, the telework set-up process and technical support for home teleworkers.

Approximately twenty teleworkers are participating in the JOB- ACCESS project. These subjects include people with a wide range of motor and sensory impairments (retinitis pigmentosa, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord lesions, etc.).

From the outset, it was decided that for the purposes of the research project, the telework arrangement would be implemented on a part-time basis only, and in this way problems related to isolation and lack of contact with colleagues could hopefully be avoided. Participants would only telework for 2 to 3 days a week and would work at the office, in their usual set-up, on the other days. While this approach has its advantages, it also has one major drawback: the need to duplicate the workstation at the office and in the worker's home. In fact, a workstation equipped for persons with disabilities does not usually lend itself to being shared with others. Furthermore, shared space doesn't seem to be very popular in the workplace, even among workers without special needs. Although the costs involved in this duplication can be justified in the case of a pilot project, it nonetheless gives the impression that the costs associated with setting up someone with a disability in a telework arrangement are prohibitively high.

The Telework Implementation Process

For this project, a telework set-up was established in each of the participant's homes. The process of implementing this telework set-up involved the following steps:

• Carry out preliminary interviews with participants and their immediate supervisors
• Hold information session for teleworkers, their supervisors and technical support staff responsible for providing computer support
• Evaluate participants' workstations, tasks and access needs
• Select appropriate solutions for workstation accommodation and connection to the local area network
• Acquire equipment by purchasing, borrowing from computer support departments, or signing up for telecommunications services
• Install and configure equipment
• Train teleworker on new equipment, concentrating on specially adapted equipment
• Commence teleworking:

Altogether, this series of steps required an average of 6 months to one year for each teleworker. The entire process was carried out over 2 years. The diversity of both disabilities and of tasks involved made each participant's case unique.

As for installing and configuring the workstation in the worker's home, the following strategy was adopted: the workstation was first installed and configured at work on the local area network, along with all of the required specially adapted equipment. Once this workstation was completely operational, and the client was familiar with the basic functioning of all the necessary material, it was taken to the worker's home and then connected to the network via the most transparent link possible. The advantage of this strategy is that it allows the workplace environment to be duplicated as closely as possible. It also allows us to take advantage of the extra help required to update the machine's configuration, and particularly that of applications which are unique to the work environment.

Solutions Retained

The optimal solutions for setting participants up in a telework arrangement share a certain number of common attributes.

In terms of specially adapted aids, the most up-to-date and comfortable equipment was chosen. Typical examples included:

• voice recognition software was chosen for participants with severely restricted use of their upper limbs
• screen review software with voice synthesis and/or Braille display options were selected for participants with little or no functional sight
• screen magnification using a hardware zoom function was used for most participants with limited vision, in addition to other adaptive products.

In all cases, emphasis was placed on training. The importance of training in the use of specially adapted equipment was recognized as essential from the outset.

In order to connect participants to the local area network, a solution based on a making a bridge to an ISDN link (integrated service digital network) was used as often as possible. Compared to a conventional connection using an analogue modem and server, this arrangement has the following advantages:

• data transfer rate at least 5 times higher (128 Kb/s rather than 28.8 Kb/s)
• connection established automatically in a way that is transparent to the user
• no special software to add to the user's workstation; access to local area network is seen by the machine as identical to a connection made at the office
• higher level of security, especially for protecting against data interception and intrusion on the office network

This arrangement is particularly appropriate for implementing the plan described above, involving transporting the office workstation to the participant's home and establishing a transparent connection. ISDN bridges make it easy to fulfill the latter condition both in terms of operation and performance.

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Problems Encountered

Following the initial set-up phase, a number of observations can be made about this process.

• The entire process took longer than planned, especially for acquiring and installing equipment. This can probably be traced to the administrative inertia inherent in these operations, particularly in the public service.
• As a consequence of these delays and the rapid evolution of technology, many products recommended after the initial evaluation were discontinued or modified by the time orders were approved. This often required additional research and testing, delaying the implementation process further.
• One difficulty, which at first may not be apparent from the process description, is the lack of accommodation and sub optimal functionality of the workstation initially used by the disabled worker at the office. In fact, our initial premise, that the worker was completely equipped and productive within the office setting was false, and especially in the case of persons with partial or total visual impairment. Moreover, this situation was made worse following the mass migration of operating systems to Windows (3.1, 95 or the equivalent). Therefore, before we could deal with the problem of setting workers up to perform telework, we had to first ensure that their workplace set-up was operational and efficient. In practice, the solutions envisaged for adapting the telework workstation to the home setting were also applied to the one at the office. In this way, participation in the project was perceived as an opportunity to improve the participant's work situation, or even to make it functional.
• Another problem identified was that of getting the real story about participants' current situation and working environment. In fact, it is often quite difficult to know the exact degree to which a certain piece of software or specially adapted equipment is functioning in the intended manner. Accounts given by teleworkers, computer support staff or even supervisors didn't always reflect reality accurately enough. Specifically, a lack of technical knowledge about certain aspects, not only on the part of teleworkers but sometimes exhibited by computer support staff as well, led them to lump unrelated problems together with the use of specially adapted aids, which in themselves did not pose problems. This situation can in many cases be attributed to a lack of communication or information on the part of technical staff, and this is why computer support personnel were invited to take part from the beginning, in the first information session held on the project.
• The lengthy training process, especially for some complicated adaptive aids, is another obstacle to establishing a home telework setup. But this is also the case for systems and software used in the normal course of work in the workplace. In general, training on new tools is to some extent neglected, and the adverse effects of this neglect are all the more obvious in a telework arrangement. In addition, we observed that much learning was traditionally accomplished in an informal way, by "looking over a colleague's shoulder", and that this style of learning was completely out of reach for persons with little or no vision.

Conclusions

All of the observations that were made based on the first phase of the JOB-ACCESS project seem to converge on a central theme: the dynamic nature of work in general and of the telework situation in particular. In fact, even before participants had begun teleworking, many were faced with changes of one kind or another: job description, supervisor, software, etc.

In combination with changes in participants' personal lives, having to do with their disability or not, this situation makes any solution temporary and even precarious. A case in point would be the distress felt by the community of visually impaired users with the migration of office operating systems to Windows. It is thus necessary to follow the teleworkers' progress closely, especially in the face of technical changes that arise in the working environment. In addition to this close communication, a means of updating workers' tools and providing training must also figure in the overall plan.

The final phase of the project should be terminated by early 1998. By that time we should have sufficient data to contribute to the development of guidelines to facilitate teleworking for persons with disabilities.

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