Case Study
Workplace design for a teacher

Company:

The employer is a state government or high school.

Employee's Disability and Functional Limitation:

The man has epilepsy and associated seizures. After each seizure, it takes several days for him to regain full function. He should not be assigned to activities with intense time and performance pressures, as these lead to increased psychological stress and promote the precipitation of a seizure.
The man shows signs of increasing mental exhaustion and also mental overload, due to school demands during the day. The course of the disease so far has shown that seizures seem to occur whenever he is more challenged at work.

Training and job:

The man completed a teacher training course and has been working as a teacher of mathematics and physics at a grammar school since his traineeship.

Workplace and work organisation:

  • Preparation of teaching units and setting up experiments for physics lessons in the home study and at school
  • Conducting teaching units at school
  • Preparing and conducting examinations and exams in the home study and at school
  • Correcting examinations in the home study
The teacher is no longer able to cope with the mental strain of conducting examinations. When carrying out preparations for lessons at school, there is no supervision in the event of seizures occurring.

Therefore, the following changes were made:
  • Use of a paging system as an emergency alarm system with automatic triggering in the event of a seizure or fall
  • Modification of the elevator control of the existing vertical elevator in the school building (remains open and visible during the parking function)
  • Reduction of the weekly working hours from 23 to 13 school hours
The missing ten teaching hours that the teacher can no longer teach due to disability-related reasons are taken over by the newly hired teaching staff. The teacher is currently taking over, in addition to his teaching, the induction of a new teacher and some organisational work.

Assistive products used:

Personal emergency call systems

Support and participation:

The design suitable for disabled people was supported by the Integration and Inclusion Office. Advice was provided by the Technical Advisory Service of the Integration and Inclusion Office.

ICF Items

Reference Number:

R/PB4233


Last Update: 2 Jul 2019