Case Study
Creation and design of a workplace for a courier driver

This micro-company offers express transportation services throughout Europe and operates exclusively on behalf of a larger freight forwarder. The company has three full-time employees and two people in marginal employment. The micro-enterprise is planning to permanently employ or take on an employee with a severe disability who is currently still in his probationary period.

The man is deaf and cannot perceive acoustic information (e.g. speech and signals) and cannot communicate verbally via spoken language. Due to his disability, acoustic information must therefore be converted and appropriate assistive products used for communication. The degree of disability (GdB) is 100.

The man is an industrial mechanic by job and has driven vans for several years. He has been employed by the company as a courier driver for a month.

The driver carries out express courier trips in Europe with a van, including loading and unloading as required. He receives the orders electronically from the freight forwarder via a fleet management system with order scheduling. The orders are transmitted to the vehicle by radio and appear on the display of the receiving device. The transmitted orders must be accepted or acknowledged by the driver within a certain period of time. Completed orders are deleted from the display, but are still available for later evaluation. For better route planning and orientation, a navigation system with a particularly large screen has also been installed in the vehicle so that the directional instructions can be better perceived visually. The large screen also makes it easy to operate the system via touchscreen.
To compensate for the communication restrictions, the driver uses a smartphone to communicate with the small company in writing and to transmit important image information, e.g. vehicle or goods damage, via the camera. The smartphone has a dictation app as standard, which the small business uses to record various voice messages for the driver, which can then be used by the driver with customers at the barriers with intercom systems. The dictation app with visual display for recordings and the smartphone microphone for voice input can also be used to visually determine when someone is speaking on the intercom. A corresponding visual indicator shows this in the app and the driver can then start their voice message.

The vehicle (including fleet management system equipment) for the newly created workplace and the design suitable for disabled people were funded by the Integration and Inclusion Office. Advice was provided by the Technical Advisory Service of the Integration and Inclusion Office.