Whether you handle customer service complaints from an office setting, work in construction or cook at an upscale restaurant, your vision is crucial to doing your job well. Although workers with visual limitations can do most jobs, they may require assistive technology or other accommodations to do their work safely and effectively.
Given that your vision is key to your ongoing professional success, you should seek to protect it when at all possible. Although you can get workers’ compensation for an injury that affects your eyes or ability to see, it would be better to avoid such injury in the first place.
According to federal job injury statistics, proactive efforts on your part could go a very long way toward preventing vision-related injuries on the job.
The vast majority of eye injuries are preventable
According to an analysis of eye injuries on the job in the United States, roughly 2,000 workers hurt their eyes on the job every single day somewhere in the country. Some of these injuries will be temporary, such as scratches and infections caused by exposure on the job. Other injuries may lead to someone permanently losing vision.
As many as 90% of those injuries are preventable with proper safety measures. Experts estimate that roughly 75% of eye injuries occur because workers do not wear proper personal protective equipment (PPE) on the job. Sometimes, it is the worker’s fault for choosing not to wear eye protection provided by their employer. Other times, the company may have failed to provide eye coverings or may even create a work environment where people feel like they cannot make use of PPE on the job.
Eye injuries can lead to big workers’ compensation claims
Whether you will need weeks off to heal after a surgery or you have permanent consequences for your vision that will prevent you from returning to your job, you may very well need to file a workers’ compensation claim following an eye injury. The good news is that even if you unintentionally caused the injury by not wearing appropriate PPE, workers’ compensation is a no-fault program that will not deny you coverage just because of your own contributions to the injury.
Learning more about common injuries and your rights can help you when you may need to file a workers’ compensation claim.
