Short answer. The Labor Code allows it when the employment is necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities and when it does not create unfair competition in labor costs or impair or lower working standards. The conditions are about the labour market, not about the worker's capability.
What the law says
Handicapped workers may be employed when their employment is necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities and when it does not create unfair competition in labor costs or impair or lower working standards.
Labor Code, Article 79 — When Handicapped Workers Are Employable. Read the full provision →
Read what the conditions are actually about
The article permits such employment when their employment is necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities and when it does not create unfair competition in labor costs or impair or lower working standards. None of those clauses asks anything about the individual worker. They ask about the effect on the labour market: are opportunities being opened rather than closed, is the wage floor being undercut, are standards being pulled down. The provision is written as a permission to the employer with guards attached, and the guards protect the workforce as a whole.
Why an anti-undercutting rule sits in this Title
The concern is historical and it is candid. A Title that allows employment at a reduced rate creates an obvious temptation: hire at the lower rate, displace workers on the full one, and call it a welfare programme. The condition about unfair competition in labor costs exists to prevent exactly that, and the condition about impairing or lowering working standards to prevent the accompanying slide in conditions. Both are limits on the employer, which is the sense in which this article is protective rather than restrictive.
This is not a licence to treat the job as charity
It is worth naming the reading this article invites and rejecting it. Nothing here says that a worker within the definition may be employed only out of accommodation, or that the arrangement is a favour that can be withdrawn at will. Employment under this Title is employment: the agreement required by the next article must state the rate, the duration and the work to be performed, and it is subject to inspection by the labour department. A job held on those terms is held under a contract like any other.
Where the modern law is more generous
These provisions date from 1974 and have been overtaken in important respects by later disability legislation, which proceeds from equal opportunity rather than from permitted concession — a qualified person with a disability is to be engaged on the same terms as any other qualified worker. If an employer is invoking this article to justify lesser terms for you, that later statute is the one to raise, and it is worth taking both to a lawyer rather than accepting the older provision as the last word.