[Functionally adapted office furniture for handicapped patients]

Individually adapted, functional office furniture is not only capable of making physically or sensorily handicapped persons more independent but also enhances their performance. These effects combine to bring about greater personal freedom, making it unnecessary for the handicapped individual to ask for help ever so often. Different types of disability may require totally different technical solutions. The present contribution deals with various office furniture programmes adapted specifically to the needs of certain types of handicap, such as those of wheelchair users, visually impaired or blind persons, hand amputees, or cerebral palsied persons. Examples are described of disability-adapted office designs both for training purposes and workplaces, including CAD or a specifically designed arrangement for technical drawing with the feet. The main objective is to show that individual functional losses can already be compensated for to a large extent by proper selection of commercially available furniture and workplace design.