Inclusive and Accessible Skilled Trades Employment for Persons with Disabilities
Inclusive and Accessible Skilled Trades Employment for Persons with Disabilities
Generated evidence and future standard inputs that inform accommodations and training adjustments, helping trainees/apprentices with disabilities enter and stay in meaningful skilled trades roles.
Funding: Funded by Accessibility Standards Canada
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What did this Project Set Out to Do?
Canada’s skilled trades are critical to economic growth, infrastructure development, and service delivery, and they are facing persistent workforce shortages. At the same time, persons with disabilities remain underrepresented across skilled trades employment, despite representing a sizable and capable labour pool. This CISWP project set out to better understand that disconnect from an employer and workplace systems perspective alongside and centered-on lived experiences of persons with disabilities.
Rather than framing accessibility solely as a regulatory or compliance issue, the project focused on how skilled trades workplaces actually function: the physical demands of tasks, safety requirements, equipment and PPE constraints, training pathways, and workplace cultures. The goal was to identify where barriers emerge, how employers experience accommodation challenges, and what practical solutions exist to improve participation, safety, and retention of workers with disabilities in the skilled trades.
How was the Research Done?
This project combined multiple complementary research approaches to examine accessibility in the skilled trades from three interconnected perspectives: employers, workers, and existing scientific evidence.
1. In-depth interviews with skilled trades workers with disabilities
Centering this research on the lived-experiences of persons with disabilities in skilled trades, this research included the direct perspectives of apprentices, workers, and journeypersons. Participants represented a breadth of disability types, training levels, and trades.
2. Employer-focused surveys and assessments
Companies from across the skilled trades sectors were invited to complete a brief survey of their preparedness to accommodate various impairment types, access to resources, and organizational needs and confidence in supporting or accommodating persons with disabilities in their workplace.
3. Scoping reviews and environmental scans
Both scoping review and environmental scan methodologies were employed to identify workplace accommodations, support solutions, and assistive technologies and devices for various impairments and functional limitations for skilled trades workers. Specific emphasis was paid to case studies and technologies directly applied to skilled trades workplaces.
4. Mixed-methods integration
Throughout the Accessible Skilled Trades project, an intentional integration and collaborative interpretation of various sources of knowledge and the experiences and expertise of a Project Advisory Committee and Lived Experience Group were conducted.
What did the Project Discover?
Across all studies, a clear pattern emerged: accessibility challenges in the skilled trades are shaped more by systems and environments than by individual capability. Many barriers are unintentional, structural, and modifiable.
- Participation, Safety, and Risk: Workers with disabilities are present in apprenticeship pathways but remain underrepresented in long-term employment and advancement roles.
- Structural and Cultural Barriers: Skilled trades environments often emphasize physical performance, endurance, and productivity, shaping assumptions about who “fits.” Workers frequently described disclosure of disability as a strategic decision, weighing safety needs against anticipated stigma or lost opportunities.
- Training, PPE, and Equipment: The project highlighted how training design and equipment decisions can either enable or undermine accessibility,
- Employer Readiness and Capacity: Companies generally reported good intentions but demonstrated low or no preparations to support a worker with disabilities.
- Assistive Technology and Workplace Solutions: Environmental scans showed that available assistive technologies tend to focus on physical impairments, with fewer solutions addressing vision, hearing, or cognitive needs. Moreover, the awareness of and information needed by companies to support the implementation of these technologies was typically lacking.
These outcomes suggest that accessibility gaps intersect directly with workplace safety and risk management, making them relevant not only to equity goals but also to employer liability, productivity, and retention.
Key Applications
Across perspectives and population groups, key needs for improving workplace accessibility in the skilled trades included:
- More information for companies to actively prepare and recruit persons with disabilities to skilled trades careers
- Examples of workplace accommodations and support solutions applied in skilled trades to enhance visibility and problem-solving approaches for accessibility
- Cultural shifts that support the inclusion of all workers in skilled trades environments.
Why Does This Matter?
This project reframes accessibility as a workforce systems issue rather than an individual concern. Accessible trades workplaces are more likely to:
- Retain skilled workers
- Reduce injury-related costs
- Improve job-site safety for all workers
- Strengthen long-term labour supply
By identifying where barriers emerge, and where practical changes are possible, the research supports employers in making informed, defensible decisions that align safety, productivity, and inclusion.
