Scientific Reports

ACCESSIBLE SKILLED TRADES: INCLUSIVE AND ACCESSIBLE SKILLED TRADES EMPLOYMENT FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Abstract / Description

Introduction

Skilled trades are fundamental to the functioning and growth of Canada’s economy. Workers in trades occupations build infrastructure, maintain essential services, and support industries ranging from construction and manufacturing to transportation and service sec tors. The skilled trades may represent a promising pathway toward equitable employment outcomes for persons with disabilities. Skilled trades careers can provide stable employment, strong earnings potential, and opportunities for advancement. Despite this potential, persons with disabilities remain underrepresented in skilled trades occupations.

Research across sectors has documented discrimination in hiring practices, limited opportunities for advancement, and insufficient knowledge among employers regarding disability accommodation. Individuals with disabilities frequently report encountering stigma, aesthetic bias, and skepticism about their productivity or qualifications. In skilled trades environments, these barriers are often amplified by the nature of work tasks and workplace cultures. Trades workplaces often prioritize physical performance, technical skill, and productivity, which can shape assumptions about workers’ abilities and influence access to opportunities.

This report addresses knowledge gaps by examining accessibility in skilled trades from multiple complementary perspectives: workers, employers, and previous scientific studies. The projects presented in this report explore employer readiness to accommodate workers with disabilities, the availability of assistive devices, technologies and workplace support solutions, and the lived experiences of persons with disabilities navigating skilled trades employment pathways. Studies contained in this report employ complementary mixed-methods, including phenomenological interviewing, surveys, scoping reviews and environmental scans.

Collectively, these findings have direct implications for the development of accessibility standards that reflect the operational, cultural, and safety realities of skilled trades environments.

Summary of Findings

The research in this report converges on a clear message: persons with disabilities are a significant, underutilized talent pool for Canada’s skilled trades, yet face layered structural, cultural, training, and equipment barriers. Practical, scalable solutions, particularly in training design, PPE and procurement, accommodation pathways, and employer readiness, can meaningfully improve sector entry, safety, and retention.

Participation & Risk

Persons with disabilities represent about 20% of apprenticeship populations, but remain underrepresented in the broader trades workforce and advancement pathways, across a variety of sources.

Apprentices with disabilities reported lower occupational health and safety knowledge, higher likelihood of severe injury, and more chronic and short-term pain, suggesting a preventable gap in training efficacy and workplace controls.

Structural & Cultural Barriers

Structural obstacles, such as administrative complexity, inconsistent accommodation processes, and certification challenges, limit both access and progression within trades. Cultural dynamics, especially stigma, “old boys’ club” norms, and misconceptions about visible and nonvisible disabilities, shape whether workers disclose, request support, or remain in skilled trades careers. Although participants bring strengths (e.g., problem solving, hyperfocus), deficit-based assumptions often over-shadowed these assets. Disclosure is strategic: workers weigh safety, trust, and anticipated stigma, highlighting the need for transparent, psychologically safe pathways to share their disability.

Training & Learning Preferences

Hands-on learning was broadly preferred. Apprentices with disabilities consistently recommend accommodations across three themes: learning style, resources, and physical accommodations.

PPE Design

PPE issues cluster around fit, function, comfort, and sensory load. Poorly designed or ill-fitting PPE can compound disability-related needs and create compatibility conflicts with assistive devices.

Employer Readiness & Accommodations

Many companies reported being insufficiently prepared to accommodate several impairment types; readiness was lowest for vision and mobility impairments. Construction firms were less prepared than other sectors to accommodate mobility and hearing impairments.

Company size matters. Larger organizations showed greater preparedness for mobility and learning-related accommodations, suggesting a resource and capacity gradient.

Assistive Technologies & Workplace Solutions

Evidence scans show a disproportionate focus on physical impairments, with limited solutions for vision, hearing, and cognitive, needs, where many employers felt least prepared Employers’ awareness and integration of assistive technologies into disability management remain uneven; alignment between solutions and trade-specific tasks or functional demands is critical for adoption and impact.

Implications and Next Steps

Across all recommendations, a consistent theme emerges: without trade-specific standards, implementation becomes discretionary, inconsistent, and vulnerable to dilution. Employers may struggle to interpret their obligations, workers may experience uneven access to supports, and accountability mechanisms may remain weak. Therefore, trade specific standardization is not merely desirable; it is essential to achieving the objectives of accessibility legislation and ensuring that standards result in real, measurable change in skilled trades workplaces.

Conclusions

These findings underscore an urgent need to move beyond generalized approaches to accessibility and toward standards that reflect the unique cultures, tasks, and safety realities of skilled trades work. Persistent cultural exclusion, inconsistent employment practices, complex disclosure dynamics, and uneven accommodation access reveal systems that remain misaligned with the lived experiences of workers with disabilities.
By applying these findings to standards, Accessibility Standards Canada has a critical opportunity to lead this shift by advancing trade-specific accessibility standards that translate high-level principles into actionable, practical guidance. Without such specificity, implementation risks being fragmented and ineffective. With it, Canada can meaningfully expand equitable participation in the skilled trades, strengthen workforce resilience, and build inclusive trades systems capable of meeting the country’s future social and economic needs.

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Addressing Operational Stress Injuries during Infectious Public Health Crises: Self-Refection Tool for Paramedic Service Organizations

How to use this tool? Organizations can positively impact workers’ mental health and well-being while reducing the risks and efects of operational stress injuries (OSI). This organizational self-refection tool is designed to assist paramedic service organizations in identifying their strengths and areas for improvement to address OSI during an infectious public health crisis (e.g., COVID-19, SARS, Ebola, etc.). This organizational self-refection tool lists evidence-informed recommendations based on the Ten Organizational Elements presented in the Guideline for Paramedic Service Organizations to Address OSI during Infectious Public Health Crises (henceforth referred to as the “Guideline”). This self-refection tool should be used in conjunction with the Guideline. Addressing OSI in the workplace requires an integrated, coordinated, and continuous approach. To refect this, each section of this tool asks you to indicate the status and implementation of: 1) the existing organizational policies and infrastructure; 2) ongoing practices; and 3) specifc initiatives and programs that were available during an infectious public health crisis. At the end of each section, space is provided for you to document the lessons learned and any additional organizational activities that have not been listed. This is NOT an assessment or compliance tool but rather a refection tool. Although organizations should strive towards achieving most of the recommended check-list items (presented in green), the degree of how much each of the items, or the combination of items, would impact paramedics’ risk for OSI is currently unknown.

Scientific Reports 2020

Brief report of initial key findings: National work from home survey – The impacts of working from home on physical and mental health of Canadians

On March 11th, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since this announcement, working from home (WFH) has become a necessary measure to mitigate the potential transmission of COVID-19. Millions of Canadians have had the way they live, work, and interact with their communities suddenly and significantly change. With a peak of 5.4 million Canadians in a WFH arrangement during the pandemic (Statistics Canada, 2021a), a national survey aimed to capture how Canadians are faring, and how WFH has impacted their mental and physical wellbeing. Led by the Canadian Institute for Safety, Wellness & Performance (CISWP) and in collaboration with La Trobe University in Australia, we surveyed Canadians across the country between October 27th and December 21st, 2020. During this time frame, there was an average of 5,270 new cases of COVID-19 per day in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2021b). Questions focused on respondents’ mental and physical health, and work-life conflict associated with their WFH experience. At the time of survey completion, over 90% of respondents were working full time hours in a WFH setting. We present a preliminary descriptive summary of the initial results. We begin with a demographic overview of our respondents, outline major findings associated with stress and mental health, and highlight the results surrounding physical health. We then present results focused on work-life conflicts and conclude with additional key takeaways. This report includes several infographics to present detailed descriptive analysis of key findings

Scientific Reports 2020

Working in the Digital Economy: A Scoping Review of the Impact from Home Arrangements on Personal and Organizational Performance and Productivity

Background Work-from-home (WFH) has become an increasingly adopted practice across the globe. Given the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, WFH arrangements have risen substantially in an extremely short amount of time. WFH has been associated with several physical and mental health outcomes, however these health and safety issues often receive little resources and attention from a business and managerial perspective compared to organizational and worker performance and productivity. Therefore, aligning WFH practices and strategies with business goals of organizations may help catalyze awareness from decision makers and serve to effectively implement WFH policies. Objective We conducted a scoping review to synthesize current knowledge on the impact of WFH arrangements on personal and organizational performance and productivity. Methodology Through a two-step screening process, we selected and extracted data from 37 relevant articles from a search of four databases that yielded 3,402 articles. Key search terms included terminology surrounding two core concepts: WFH and productivity and performance. Results The findings from this scoping review suggest that WFH can have positive impacts on personal and organizational productivity and performance, however these positive impacts are likely related to non-mandatory arrangements. When WFH becomes mandatory and full-time in nature, or external factors (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) are at play, the overall impacts are less positive and can be detrimental. Further, evaluation of the effectiveness of a WFH arrangement vary greatly in terms of the measurement tools used and the types of questions asked. The lack of consistency will make it difficult for organizations to infer conclusive results as to the impacts of WFH and highlights the need for organizational policies to define what productivity and performance means to them, and what measurements are best suited to reflect these impacts. Key Messages: The results of this scoping review will help foster a broader understanding of the impact of WFH arrangements on personal and organizational productivity and performance, help inform the development of recommendations of organizational strategies to prepare employers to create an effective, resilient, and inclusive WFH workplace, and serve as a means to effectively implement WFH policies when aligned with business goals of the organization.