OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has prescribed many standards for companies to make sure that worker safety is prioritized.

Companies, especially those in the construction industry, must ensure that the safety standards are implemented effectively through web-based training.

OSHA requires the construction industry employers to have a specific concentration of chemicals in the air (Parts Per Molecule), which should not exceed a certain limit. It has stated such concentrations of such chemicals for about 500 substances for workers in construction and other industries, including shipyard employment.

Shipyard employment also includes exposure to chemicals; hence, web-based training is required for such workers. The workers come in contact with such chemicals when they repair ships. Their work includes cutting and joining steel on various parts and plumbing, involving exposure to chemicals such as nitrogen dioxide.

What are basic safety practices for construction sites?

Construction companies must ensure that they provide information about dangerous chemicals to employees and customers. Web-based training is required for this purpose. The employees must provide proper training to workers who are required to deal with these chemicals so that no harm is caused. They must be given instructions in print to take with them to work.

OSHA has stated a hazard specification standard (safety data sheets) for chemical and construction employers to adhere to. Per these standards, each container storing such chemicals must have labels containing pictograms. The employee must find these labels understandable to handle these chemicals with care so that no acidic burns are caused. In the construction industry, adequate importance must be placed on reporting any lack of safety equipment such as PPE.

The workers should be given web-based training to use reporting systems. The construction sites must have a medical team to deal with circumstances with excessive exposure to dangerous chemicals. The web-based training can explain the proper ways to handle the chemicals through simulations where it can display how toxic exposure can harm a worker’s health and what to do in case of certain symptoms.

Difference between (Permissible Exposure Limit)PEL AND STEL(Short Time Exposure Limit)

The construction companies must also know the permissible exposure limits (PEL) for chemicals, i.e., workers can’t be exposed to such concentrations of airborne chemicals for more than 8 or even lesser hours in a day, depending on what can be aftereffects if the chemical is inhaled.

The companies must know that they are supposed to follow the PEL values of concentration of chemicals in the air, but if it’s exceeded, it’s not to be more than STEL. This STEL refers to the Short Term Exposure Limit, which implies how much hazardous substance (time-weighted average) is present in the air for a short period of exposure of 15 minutes. This cannot happen for a duration of 15 minutes or more and should only happen a maximum of 4 times. Moreover, there should also be a time duration of 60 minutes elapsed between such exposures.

If the amount of substance is higher than STEL during such time, then it can prove to be toxic to the worker’s health. The STEL exceeding the PEL rule is applicable when the amount of substance in the air is not constant during the day.

For example, OSHA has made it mandatory that the PEL for carbon monoxide in the air is 50ppm for an 8-hour work schedule.

What are Safety Data Sheets?

OSHA requires companies to have a mandatory Safety Data Sheet. The safety data sheets, which have a 16-section format, must also be explained to onsite construction employees to ensure they face no trouble.

In Section 8 of the Safety Data Sheet, there should be the inclusion of the PEL, as prescribed by OSHA.

These Safety Data Sheets must be compulsorily prepared either by the construction industry employer or the chemical importer or manufacturer.

This data sheet must also contain useful information for workers while picking up containers with dangerous chemicals. So, Section 3 must include data about the ingredients of these chemicals. Moreover, if any spill happens, comprehensive information must be included in section 4 of the data sheet, like how to recognize symptoms and how one should take care of the victim because any delayed response can be life-threatening. The symptoms can be acute or severe, and Section 4 must cover the responses to both situations.

Section 5 must include details about how to douse fires caused by chemical leaks. There should also be measures on how to wipe such chemicals in case any spill happens, included in Section 6 of the Safety Data Sheet.

Although a Safety Data Sheet is mandatory, workers might not have everything ingrained in their memory, and any forgetfulness and negligence in such cases can cause problems. Hence, simulation-based videos must also supplement such a Safety Data Sheet to produce better results.

Consequences of non-compliance

The company can lose not only valuable man-hours if workers sustain injuries due to inhaling such chemicals, but also neurological injuries can be caused to workers, making the company liable to pay massive damages. A company must also maintain that laws are followed pertaining to such dangerous chemicals. It should have evidence regarding the management controls to handle the risks related to the release of such chemicals.

We Creativ Technologies have prepared multitude of detailed videos for our clients including simulations about the OSHA compliance standards.

Web-based training is now happening everywhere. Its rise can be attributed to a lack of time with people. LMS is the key component that determines the accessibility of such training.

The inaccessibility can arise with web-based training when the users can get stuck on certain aspects of the LMS, like how to perceive objects due to color blindness or any other disability.

Furthermore, due to mobility-based impairment, the users can’t use the mouse due to their inability to exercise motor movement and want to browse the content through keyboard shortcuts. W3C accessibility initiative has also advised using keyboard navigation to increase the usability of the course by such people.

The learners should have a global navigation menu enabled through a keyboard shortcut to go to all the pages easily without accessing the menu through the home page. Users can easily jump back and forth between pages when such a menu opens up in a popup on every page after using the keyboard shortcut.

Quick links are also there, so users don’t have to go to the top of the page to access different sections. The quick links make sure that users can easily reach the common sections. You can access these links by using the keyboard shortcuts on any page.

Adding the quick links option to a page is only possible when different headings have been added to a page. Quick links open in a popup window when the user uses the keyboard shortcuts to access them. With headings, the clutter on a page is reduced because they come before every piece of content.

LMS is providing the admins with the capability to enable the user to use these links while browsing through the content. The user can easily see the content outline of a page through its quick links and access any one of them through the up and down keys.

The LMS accessibility also has to be simple for the disabled learner. As per WHO, they constitute a significant proportion(15%) of our population. A user with cognitive, hearing, visual, or hearing or motor disability can affect his ability to use the LMS.

Hence, elearning course creators must check whether a course is 100% accessible or not for people with different disabilities. If it is not, removing all the content, causing it to become inaccessible, is better.

Web-based training must take care of Visual disability:

Visual disability also refers to color blindness, which is a common condition.

Since colorblind people can’t differentiate between colors, they can’t make out an object from its background, even though they have different colors. This problem becomes troublesome when the colorblind users can’t see the navigation buttons.

Colorblindness can’t be ignored while designing web-based training content because 253 million people have this problem. In its worst form, colorblind people suffer from monochromatism, where they can’t see any color except its brightness. So, for them, every color is either black or white, depending on its luminosity.

Hence, this is a problem for the visual designers of the web-based training content. They must use contrast to make the objects in the content visible to such people. The difference in the luminosity of the colors must be high for the colorblind to perceive them.

The visual designers should discolor the interface to grayscale and check whether it has any contrast. This is crucial so that the LMS is accessible for colorblind people.

Using the web-based training course can be problematic for the learners when it does not have any alt text for the visually impaired learners.

It’s important to ensure that the course has the headings because if it does not have them, the screen reader can’t announce them to the learners. The learners who can’t see need headings to make some sense of the document. Also, all the learners need headings so they can skip the easier parts and jump to the tougher content. With content structured through headings, a lot of time can be saved for the learners.

Similarly, table headers with the scope attribute are also crucial because the screen reader can’t differentiate between table rows and columns without them. Therefore, all the header elements in a table should have the scope attribute defined, to reveal whether it’s a row or a column.

When the content is uploaded to the LMS, it should be perfectly accessible. For example, if a course contains attachments, the screen readers should be able to announce their names because if they can’t, it’s troublesome for visually impaired learners.

Although using the screen readers makes browsing the content easy for visually impaired students, they must be aware of their usability with certain browsers. All the screen readers are not compatible with all browsers.

Hearing Disability

People also like to have captions in videos because sometimes the narrator’s accent is not understandable; hence, subtitles are important. Sometimes, such captions are necessary for people who have hearing issues.

Economic disability

LMS accessibility can also be increased by ensuring users get notifications or due dates for test submissions and posts in discussion forums. So, even when a user is not using his system, he can be alerted about any new content updates. Such notifications are useful for learners who are not using their PCs because they are travelling to their offices.

All the learners are helped through the modern-day LMSs, who can even hear chats when they cannot read them. Some students also need extra attempts to complete a quiz because they might be working alongside studies and hence lack time to study. Therefore, the LMS allows an option for the teachers to tune the quiz settings in such a way and also get noted about the highest score in all the quiz attempts. A teacher can also set the date before a student is allowed all such attempts.

Tag: web-based training

Role of web-based training safety programs in the construction industry

Companies, especially those in the construction industry, must ensure that the safety standards are implemented effectively through web-based training.

What is meant by accessibility in web based training?

The inaccessibility can arise with web-based training when the users can get stuck on certain aspects of the LMS, like how to perceive objects due to color blindness or any other disability.

Web-based training must take care of Visual disability: