Section Oneservices that rehabilitation organizations provide or the devices
that enable a disabled employee to perform the job again.
Often, relatively inexpensive devices or aids can allow a
physically disabled employee to be a productive worker again.
Such approaches include raising the height of desks in order to
provide wheelchair access, providing curb ramps for wheel-
chairs, providing appropriate handrails, simple changes in rest
room facilities, lowering elevator controls, and removing
structural barriers such as revolving doors. Simple changes
such as alterations in the job may also be made, such as
allowing physically disabled workers to work shorter hours.
Other inexpensive approaches include providing battery-
powered scooters, computer attachments that enable the deaf
to make telephone calls, and computerized speech-recognition
aids. In order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge on how
to accommodate disabled workers, companies such as AT&T,
Du Pont, Hartford Insurance, IBM, and Sears are sharing with
other companies the knowledge they have acquired in
accommodating disabled workers.^95
The return from investments in disabled workers can be
quite attractive. One large Chicago bank changed the job of a
transcriptionist so that only dictated work is typed. The
employee, who is blind, types dictated work at up to 96 words
per minute without errors.^96 The experiences of Pennsylvania
Power and Light Company (PP&L) provide further endorsement