Case Study
Workplace design for a paralegal

This is a law firm that has hired a female employee with a severe disability.

The woman has a hearing impairment or is hard of hearing. She is therefore severely disabled and only able to perceive acoustic information, e.g. spoken language and signals, to a limited extent. Due to her disability, audible information must therefore be amplified by hearing aids so that the woman can understand it acoustically.

The woman completed training as a paralegal and was newly hired by the law firm.

The paralegal works at a computer workstation in an office. Her tasks include office work, such as writing documents on the PC and making telephone calls. With the help of her hearing aids, which have directional microphones and three adjustable programs and enable the attenuation of background noise, she can hear speech and signals (doorbell and telephone bell) in a satisfactory manner and can also make telephone calls. To make phone calls, she switches the hearing aids to the T function to use the telecoils. This allows speech to be transmitted directly via the electromagnetic field of the telephone receiver through the coils into the hearing aids for amplification and better understanding. The existing corded telephone did not need to be replaced as its handset generates a satisfactory electromagnetic field for telephoning via the coils of the hearing aids.

The co-payment-free hearing aids and their adaptation were subsidized by the statutory health insurance to compensate for the disability and for participation in society. The consultation, measurements and adaptation of the hearing aids were carried out by a specialist hearing aid acoustics store.
The law firm received a temporary integration grant from the employment agency as a wage cost subsidy as part of the new employment.
also the address and telephone number of the employment agencies.