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Innovative project will keep employees safer in the workplace

20/12/2018
erasmus-web

Researchers will improve emergency communication in noisy working environments as part of a new €361,901 project led by the University of Wolverhampton.

Signed Safety at Work will lead to the development of a signed health and safety vocabulary, which people can use to communicate urgent safety messages in the workplace.

The use of signs is intended to make it easier for several groups of employees to communicate: hearing, deaf, hearing-impaired, and people whose first language is not English.

The project has been granted European funding, after a successful Erasmus+ Key Action 2 strategic partnership bid from the University's Faculty of Arts.

Alison Carminke, Academic Enterprise Manager for the University of Wolverhampton's Faculty of Arts, said: "Our signed vocabulary promotes employment opportunities for D/deaf, hearing-impaired and migrant employees, as its use can alleviate concerns about dangerous workplaces not being safe for them.

"We will create an e-learning resource to teach the vocabulary, which can be for both work-based and online learning. We hope employers will be encouraged to promote it to their staff as it does not require a lengthy or expensive training course. "

The e-learning resource will be based around the innovative online sign language glossary which has been created and trialled in several previous projects managed by the University of Wolverhampton: Sign Media Smart, Sign Media Enterprise, Sign Media Vocational Training.

Signed Safety at Work, which will run over 30 months, was officially launched by partners from Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and the UK in Wolverhampton last month.

Further information

The partners involved in this project are:

University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom – Faculty of Arts

Universitaet Klagenfurt (Austria)

Istituto Statale Sordi Di Roma (Italy)  
Searchlighter Services Ltd (United Kingdom)  
Bellyfeel Media Limited (United Kingdom) 
Asociacion Empresarial De Investigacion Centro Tecnologico Del Muebley La Madera De La Region De Murcia (CETEM) (Spain)  
Vyzkumny ustav bezpecnosti prace, v.v.i. (Czech Republic) 

For more information please contact the Corporate Communications Team.

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