We see those parking spaces at shopping malls and outside restaurants. We often see the ramps and railings. We will see guide dogs safely leading people across a busy street. But while we often see these things, does it ever really register in our heads that the disabled or handicapped are as common as we might observe?

[Image courtesy of Dheepak Ra from Flickr via a Creative Commons license]Disabilities that require wheelchairs are pretty infrequent in general, but a recent survey of Canadians showed a remarkable disconnect between common perceptions about disability and the actual facts abut the frequency of a disability that impacts a work site and a worker’s ability to perform his or her job.

If the results of a recent survey are any indication, the answer clearly is no. There could be several reasons for this, but one of them can certainly be the fact that some disabilities are not physically obvious  but can be those which restrict, limit or bar us from doing our jobs well or at all. Some of these include various mental and emotional problems, deafness or even some learning disorder. Never mind some serious disease which does not manifest itself externally.

When you think of this, it makes perfect sense why the results of the study by RBC Insurance would seem so surprising. Though of course, your humble workplace safety correspondent, is not surprised at all because I have finely tuned Spidey Sense. For those of you mere mortals, here is the main finding – that nearly half of all Canadians surveyed (about nine in 20 to be more precise) believed that disability is a rare or at least very infrequent occurrence.

Now, we can’t say for sure what the definition of “infrequent” is, but we can say that it’s estimated that almost 15 percent (or about one in seven) of Canadians currently experience some kind of disability – even a temporary one – and the odds are that about a third of all workers will, in their lifetime, experience some sort of disability that will sideline them from work for at least three months. I don’t know about you, but that seems a little too frequent to be infrequent.

However, as one might expect, the “official” definition of a disability and the common definition are quite different. Did you know that depression and diabetes are considered official reasons for disability? If not, you are not alone – only about one in five Canadians surveyed considered diabetes a disability, and less than half cited depression as a known reason for disability. The super-majority of those surveyed considered disabilities to be catastrophic, such as  accidents either from the workplace or a physical trauma (64 percent and 72 percent, respectively). Anxiety, another official disability, was only recognized as such by about 30 percent of the survey respondents.  Guess they weren’t very anxious about answering that question!

Anyway, this study was also eye-opening for some other misconceptions by Canadians regarding disability. I bring this up because it is our duty as safety professionals to be aware of the mentality of our workers when it comes to being disabled. If they are unaware of the frequency or have a relatively nonchalant attitude about it, that could carry over into how they do their jobs on the work site, which may put your safety program under pressure unless we make them aware of the realities and educate them about disability but also the resources available to prevent disabilities.

Here are a couple more of the misconceptions that came out of the study:

  • The one that stood out to me most was this: About 25 percent of those surveyed said disabilities are caused by carelessness. This plays into the earlier survey result that most people think disabilities come from accidents. But here’s the fact – people are actually six times more likely to be disabled by a disease – such as cancer, mental illness or some physical disorder – than from an accident. So yes, being careful helps, but it pales in comparison to those things we can’t really control.
  • Only one in five surveyed said that a disability would adversely affect their ability to perform their job. Th fact is, though, that 62 percent of workers have known someone at their workplace who had lost time due to a disability, with about one-fourth of those having taken disability time themselves.
  • Nearly three-fourths of those surveyed think that healthy living can reduce the risk of disability. While this can be true to an extent, it’s interesting that the number who agree with the statement far outshines the fact that half of adults consider themselves obese and about 20 percent still smoke. So did this survey happen to question only those people who don’t smoke and are in good shape? That could be a small sample size. Just saying.

There does seem to be plenty of misconceptions that we as safety officers must take on as a duty to confront and replace. Ignorance of these issues can be detrimental to the workers first and foremost, but could also be very risky to the company’s productivity and profitability. For more about this survey, you can check out this article.