Abstract
The topic of including disabled workers in the industrial sector is gaining increasing importance, also because of the growing difficulty in finding qualified personnel and the opportunity to tap into a diverse talent pool. The term inclusion refers to creating accessible work environments that ensure active participation and effective contribution from all operators. This work presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on the use of Extended Reality (XR) technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR), to promote the inclusion of disabled workers in industrial workplaces. More in detail, the paper analyzes how these technologies can affect physical, cognitive or sensorial barriers in terms of accessibility, safety, ergonomics, and effectiveness. The use of XR allows operators to receive more intuitive and effective support, focusing their attention and simplifying visualization. The results show increased productivity and efficiency, as well as a significant improvement in the independence of operators with disabilities. The results of the SLR highlight the impact of supporting disabled operators through XR technologies, underlining its potential to create an inclusive workspace. Future research should focus on developing standard evaluation methodologies to measure the usefulness of the assistive technologies (AT) for workers with disabilities. This would allow for the classification of ATs based on their effectiveness for different types of disabilities and applications.