The metal sector comprises many sectors such as machinery, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, and defense industry, and standard machine elements are used in these sectors from production to assembly processes. It is very important in terms of production quality that the standard machine elements, which are used prevalently in the production processes, are correctly known by the employees as well as their names and functions. Machine elements are one of the most important compulsory courses in the curriculum of national and international vocational and technical education and engineering faculties. On the other hand, there is no technical sign language dictionary developed for the hearing impaired individuals in the curriculum of vocational education and sign language dictionary.
Firms employ a workforce, which is included in various disability groups due to legal obligations and social responsibility, on production lines. According to the result of the survey, more than 50% of the deaf people in Europe and Turkey are either unemployed or working in low-skilled and low-paid jobs. Today’s education systems are focused on school and apprenticeship education rather than employ disabled people long term, and is not based on the continuation of their individual development depending on the work which they strive after starting a company. Therefore, hearing-impaired people have difficulty adapting to the company they work for and have communication problems within the company.
Some of the difficulties of hearing-impaired individuals in the working environment are as follows;
Employer’s Misconceptions and Attitudes: Employers having high expectations of hearing-impaired employees, discovering their true potentials because of not communicating effectively with them, thinking that they are weak and inefficient.
Barriers to Business Progress: Like all employees, hearing-impaired employees are in search of progress in terms of their current position and the work they do. However, when they cannot access important information in the workplace, they put in a disadvantaged position, and many deaf people have to leave because they cannot communicate effectively with their colleagues and superiors. In addition, the attitudes of employers and colleagues can prevent hearing-impaired people from fulfilling their potential and often make them feel isolated at work. Since there is no technical sign language developed for the hearing-impaired working on the production line, these people cannot fully express the machine elements and their duties in sign languages. For this reason, they have communication problems in companies and cannot also benefit from the technical training provided on the part of the company.
The employment problem may be thought to be solved when people with disabilities are recruited. However, if the work environment is not regulated according to the disability conditions and on-job training cannot be provided in the desired quality, the desired efficiency cannot be obtained from the disabled people. This poses a problem both for the employer and for the disabled who are in search of jobs.
Hearing-impaired individuals in all disability groups often have a special position in society because they do not have a disability appearance in terms of physical appearance. Ensuring that these individuals are noticed by society, their integration with society, their adaptation to the life of society should be provided with opportunities to facilitate and eliminate their differences.