Vocational Rehabilitation Services

IDB is able to provide or assist you in obtaining a wide variety of services that can help you to prepare for employment, find employment, and be successful in employment. These services include, but are not necessarily limited to:

Disability-related Skills Training

This includes training in how to use a white cane to safely and independently travel in any environment. It includes training in reading and writing braille, techniques for cooking, cleaning, and managing one’s home, and training in using computers, tablets, phones, or other technology using screen readers, braille displays, and/or magnification. Clients who are interested in learning alternative techniques more quickly, building self-confidence, and working through their fears and frustrations in a positive, supportive environment choose to attend our training center in Des Moines. Skills training may also be provided in your community on an itinerant basis by vocational rehabilitation teachers and rehabilitation technology specialists.

Rehabilitation Technology

This includes low-tech and high tech devices that can allow you to perform job and life tasks. This includes screen reading or magnification software, refreshable braille displays, a long white cane, devices for writing braille, and other devices necessary to complete work and life tasks. This also may include training on how to use these devices.

Educational Support

IDB may assist clients in obtaining vocational, on the job, or apprenticeship training. IDB may also support clients in attending community, four-year, or graduate school if it is required to achieve your vocational goal. Please see our Terms and Conditions for IDB Sponsorship of Post-Secondary Education & Training

Counseling & Guidance

When people lose significant amounts of vision or grow up with little or no vision, it is very common to feel alone, sad, angry, or afraid of what the future may hold. Society in general tends to see blind people as limited in opportunity and potential. Blind people are rarely represented in movies and TV, but when we are, we are most often shown as helpless, bumbling, or vulnerable. 

When you are very used to doing things visually, it is hard to imagine how you might do those same things without eyesight. However, once people learn how to do things without relying on eyesight, build their self-confidence, and come to understand that they can be independent and live a full and happy life, these feelings greatly diminish or disappear entirely. 

This isn’t easy and it takes time. Your rehab counselor is there to talk with you about your fears, frustrations, and sadness’s. Your counselor can help you to find positive solutions to challenges.

It is also commonly believed that blind people or people with very limited vision can only perform certain types of jobs. Actually there are blind doctors, lawyers, carpenters, teachers, scientists, business owners, and many, many other professions. 

Blindness shouldn’t be a factor in choosing what career to pursue. Your counselor can help you figure out how you can use alternative techniques to complete job tasks and find blind people already working in the career you choose with whom you can talk about the techniques they use to do their jobs.

Counselor's Responsibilities

Your counselor wants you to succeed and will work with you to achieve your goal as agreed in your plan. In addition, your counselor will:

• consult with you on a regular basis;
• help you get the information you need to make informed choices
• tell you if a different counselor is assigned to you
• help you plan how costs of services will be covered
• arrange to pay for the costs of services that will be covered by the Department
• help you receive the services you need in a timely manner
• review and talk with you about how you are progressing toward your employment goal
• assist you in your job search
• discuss case closure with you and inform you in writing when your case is closed

Career Exploration & Job Readiness Services

Your counselor can help you to explore different career options. She or he may assist you with:

• skill and interest inventories
• labor market information
• informational interviews
• job shadows
• other resources designed to help you find the right career for you

In addition, you may choose to participate in training in time management, interpersonal communication, dressing for success, or other soft skills necessary for finding and keeping employment. We want to make sure that you have all the tools you need to be successful in your job search and able to thrive in your career.

Job Placement Services

Your counselor can work with you or help you to work with local workforce center professionals to write resumes and cover letters, search for job openings, and prepare for interviews. Your counselor can help you to become comfortable sharing with employers how you will perform job duties and what accommodations you might require.

Benefits Counseling

Your counselor can provide or arrange for assistance in understanding how working will impact any social security disability insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) you may be receiving. They can help you to understand ticket to work, PASS plans, trial work periods and other aspects of these programs that many people find confusing.

Support Services

IDB may provide support services that can help you to access the career and training services you need. This might include things like readers, interpreters, or transportation. These services can only be provided when they are necessary to achieve your goal and cannot be provided through a comparable benefit.