Each Member shall gradually extend its systems
of vocational guidance, including continuing employment information, with a
view to ensuring that comprehensive information and the broadest possible
guidance are available to all children, young persons and adults, including
appropriate programmes for all handicapped and disabled persons.
Measures should be taken to provide effective
and adequate vocational guidance and vocational training for particular groups
of the population so that they will enjoy equality in employment and improved
integration into society and the economy.
Particular attention should be paid to such
groups as:
handicapped and disabled persons.
D. Handicapped and Disabled Persons
Whenever they can benefit by it, persons who
are handicapped or disabled should have access to vocational guidance and
vocational training programmes provided for the general population.
Where this is not desirable owing to the
severity or the nature of the handicap or disablement or the needs of specific
groups of handicapped or disabled persons, specially adjusted programmes should
be provided.
Every effort should be made to educate the
general public, employers and workers, as well as medical and paramedical
personnel and social workers, on the need for giving persons who are handicapped
or disabled vocational guidance and vocational training which would enable them
to find employment suitable to their needs, on the adjustments in employment
which some of them may require and on the desirability of special support for
them in their employment.
Measures should be taken to ensure, as far as
possible, the integration or reintegration of the handicapped and the disabled
into productive life in a normal working environment.
Account should be taken of the Vocational
Rehabilitation (Disabled) Recommendation, 1955.
Part II. Principles of Vocational
Rehabilitation and Employment Policies for Disabled Persons
Article 2
Each Member shall, in accordance with national conditions,
practice and possibilities, formulate, implement and periodically review a
national policy on vocational rehabilitation and employment of disabled persons.
Article 3
The said policy shall aim at ensuring that appropriate
vocational rehabilitation measures are made available to all categories of
disabled persons, and at promoting employment opportunities for disabled persons
in the open labour market.
II. Vocational Rehabilitation and
Employment Opportunities
Disabled persons should enjoy equality of opportunity and
treatment in respect of access to, retention of and advancement in
employment which, wherever possible, corresponds to their own choice and
takes account of their individual suitability for such employment.
In providing vocational rehabilitation and employment
assistance to disabled persons, the principle of equality of opportunity and
treatment for men and women workers should be respected.
Special positive measures aimed at effective equality of
opportunity and treatment between disabled workers and other workers should
not be regarded as discriminating against other workers.
Measures should be taken to promote employment
opportunities for disabled persons which conform to the employment and
salary standards applicable to workers generally.
Such measures, in addition to those enumerated in Part
VII of the Vocational Rehabilitation (Disabled) Recommendation, 1955, should
include:
appropriate measures to create job opportunities on
the open labour market, including financial incentives to employers to
encourage them to provide training and subsequent employment for
disabled persons, as well as to make reasonable adaptations to
workplaces, job design, tools, machinery and work organisation to
facilitate such training and employment;
appropriate government support for the establishment
of various types of sheltered employment for disabled persons for whom
access to open employment is not practicable;
encouragement of co-operation between sheltered and
production workshops on organisation and management questions so as to
improve the employment situation of their disabled workers and, wherever
possible, to help prepare them for employment under normal conditions;
appropriate government support to vocational
training, vocational guidance, sheltered employment and placement
services for disabled persons run by non-governmental organisations;
encouragement of the establishment and development of
co-operatives by and for disabled persons and, if appropriate, open to
workers generally;
appropriate government support for the establishment
and development of small-scale industry, co-operative and other types of
production workshops by and for disabled persons (and, if appropriate,
open to workers generally), provided such workshops meet defined minimum
standards;
elimination, by stages if necessary, of physical,
communication and architectural barriers and obstacles affecting
transport and access to and free movement in premises for the training
and employment of disabled persons; appropriate standards should be
taken into account for new public buildings and facilities;
wherever possible and appropriate, facilitation of
adequate means of transport to and from the places of rehabilitation and
work according to the needs of disabled persons;
encouragement of the dissemination of information on
examples of actual and successful instances of the integration of
disabled persons in employment;
exemption from the levy of internal taxes or other
internal charges of any kind, imposed at the time of importation or
subsequently on specified articles, training materials and equipment
required for rehabilitation centres, workshops, employers and disabled
persons, and on specified aids and devices required to assist disabled
persons in securing and retaining employment;
provision of part-time employment and other job
arrangements, in accordance with the capabilities of the individual
disabled person for whom full-time employment is not immediately, and
may not ever be, practicable;
research and the possible application of its results
to various types of disability in order to further the participation of
disabled persons in ordinary working life;
appropriate government support to eliminate the
potential for exploitation within the framework of vocational training
and sheltered employment and to facilitate transition to the open labour
market.
In devising programmes for the integration or
reintegration of disabled persons into working life and society, all forms
of training should be taken into consideration; these should include, where
necessary and appropriate, vocational preparation and training, modular
training, training in activities of daily living, in literacy and in other
areas relevant to vocational rehabilitation.
To ensure the integration or reintegration of disabled
persons into ordinary working life, and thereby into society, the need for
special support measures should also be taken into consideration, including
the provision of aids, devices and ongoing personal services to enable
disabled persons to secure, retain and advance in suitable employment.
Vocational rehabilitation measures for disabled persons
should be followed up in order to assess the results of these measures.
The principles, measures and methods of vocational
training generally applied in the training of non-disabled persons should
apply to disabled persons in so far as medical and educational conditions
permit.
The training of disabled persons should, wherever
possible, enable them to carry on an economic activity in which they can
use their vocational qualifications or aptitudes in the light of
employment prospects.
For this purpose, such training should be:
co-ordinated with selective placement, after
medical advice, in occupations in which the performance of the work
involved is affected by, or affects, the disability to the least
possible degree;
provided, wherever possible and appropriate, in
the occupation in which the disabled person was previously employed
or in a related occupation; and
continued until the disabled person has acquired
the skill necessary for working normally on an equal basis with
non-disabled workers if he is capable of doing so.
Wherever possible, disabled persons should receive
training with and under the same conditions as non-disabled persons.
Special services should be set up or developed for
training disabled persons who, particularly by reason of the nature or
the severity of their disability, cannot be trained in company with
non-disabled persons.
Wherever possible and appropriate, these services
should include, inter alia:
schools and training centres, residential or
otherwise;
special short-term and long-term training courses
for specific occupations;
courses to increase the skills of disabled
persons.
Measures should be taken to encourage employers to
provide training for disabled persons; such measures should include, as
appropriate, financial, technical, medical or vocational assistance.
Measures should be taken to develop special
arrangements for the placement of disabled persons.
These arrangements should ensure effective placement
by means of:
registration of applicants for employment;
recording their occupational qualifications,
experience and desires;
interviewing them for employment;
evaluating, if necessary, their physical and
vocational capacity;
encouraging employers to notify job vacancies to
the competent authority;
contacting employers, when necessary, to
demonstrate the employment capacities of disabled persons, and to
secure employment for them;
assisting them to obtain such vocational
guidance, vocational training, medical and social services as may be
necessary.
Follow-up measures should be taken:
to ascertain whether placement in a job or recourse
to vocational training or retraining services has proved to be
satisfactory and to evaluate employment counselling policy and methods;
to remove as far as possible obstacles which would
prevent a disabled person from being satisfactorily settled in work.
