Industrial Manufacturing Workstations Suitability for People with Disabilities: The Perception of Workers Edson S.M. Teixeira ( ✉ ) and Maria Lucia L.R. Okimoto Post Graduate Program in Design, Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), General Carneiro St., 460, Curitiba, Brazil edson.teixeira@ifsc.edu.br, lucia.demec@ufpr.br Abstract. The inclusion processes of people with disabilities in industrial production lines are being carried out. Thereby, getting to know the current workstations is important for planning, designing and developing new assistive technology products. Thus, this paper presents an analysis study of industrial manufacturing workstations based on the perception of workers without disabil‐ ities. For this, it relies on a survey with a questionnaire given to 222 workers from different processing industries. Analyzes are presented and interpreted in sets. It establishes that the inclusion processes are happening, but still in a superficial way. There is an inclusion gap directly related to the needs for modification and, in reality, favoring the inclusion of workers with milder disabilities. Keywords: Industrial manufacturing · Inclusion process · Workstations · Assistive products · Workers perceptions 1 Introduction When talking about industrial manufacturing processes one must understand the complexity that surrounds this condition. A manufacturing line is developed to meet the manufacturing of products with quality and efficiency. Thereby, its steps are organized so that the sequence follows production patterns that must be guaranteed by the workers who work there. The entry of professionals into the work of these processes requires the ability to develop a set of skills in an appropriate way. When a person with disabilities is included in these processes, it is not always possible to organize the work in order to reconcile existing activities with personal abilities. Thus, adaptation and inclusion processes are necessary, which makes way for the development of new assistive products. Assuming that the inclusion process is a reality, it is relevant to bring up the percep‐ tion of suitability of the current industrial workstations and to verify how the companies’ experience can contribute to this complex process. However, the verification of suita‐ bility from the s point of view of the disabled worker could lead to a restricted one, since each person with disability could explain their difficulties. In order to understand in a general way the current adequacy for disabled people, it is understood that the perception of workers without disabilities would be more adequate. Moreover, product development processes usually start from the overview of the current situation to the understanding of the context and planning of a new product to be developed [1–5]. This stage is important © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 F. Rebelo and M. Soares (eds.), Advances in Ergonomics in Design, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 588, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60582-1_49