I received exceptional help from the Indiana Low Vision Center. My advocate was a lady named Melissa Watts. She was so attentive and truly cared that I received help. She was courteous and understanding of my inability to drive, and came to my home for our meetings. She assessed what services would be helpful to me and obtained free materials and tools to assist me in daily life. Her daughter was one of my Facebook friends, so she and I connected there as well. She followed my posts, and frequently used those posts to learn what needs might not be met, and contacted me via messenger to suggest things that might help. When I got an amazon echo, she commented on my post about it and asked me to let her know how much it was able to assist me in daily tasks, as she was interested in pushing the low vision center to start providing them to people who could use them.

She was an absolutely incredible woman who put her heart and soul into her work, even though her own chronic illness often made life hard on her.

She passed away a while back, and my heart ached when I saw the news.

She was an amazing advocate. ❤️

I'm from York PA. This one is weird due to how interweaved it is. OVR has been most unhelpful to me. They don't want to do anything unless I have a job except to pay for an agency to help. It is called AHEDD, and they are good. However, when we worked at it for a while, with limited success, OVR cut their funding. They also didn't want to get me the equipment Id need to do the job I was hired for, So imagine how successful I was going into interviews like sure, I can do this job, but I can't show you that I can, and not only that, but I can't start for 2 weeks because that's how long their ordering process takes.

I’m from Virginia and have been working with the DBVI using their vocational rehab. The first counselor I had was a joke and a narcissist, so I got almost no help with schooling. The first one got fired for being mentally unfit to hold down the position of being a counselor. My second counselor has been amazing and has provided funding for everything.

As a whole, the state has been a pain to work with. They keep an approved list of majors for blind/VI students that we have to choose from. For example, I wasn’t permitted to double major in philosophy like I wanted.

All I head from them was about jobs. Low paying, dead end jobs. Losing vision mid career is horrible. You’re forced to listen to bureaucrats that couldn’t do your former job tell you that you need to work at min wage for self respect. Actually, you don’t.

In my experience, there is a coloration between distance from government and help received. Essentially, friends and NGOs are most helpful while the educational 'services' and DVR are big on talk and metaphorically bedridden.

I am in Pennsylvania, the services have worked for me here but it depends on the counselor. I had one counselor who was sexist and it sucked! My counselor now is amazing though. And I’m getting everything I need

My experience has lead me to believe that what you get out of the service is directly related to how much you put in and how much you are willing to put yourself out there. I have found if you expect social services to bend over backwards to provide you every single thing you want and to do exactly what you wish, you were going to be disappointed. People without disabilities don’t get everything they want, so there really is no reason for people with disabilities to expect this either. What you can do is take me support and make the best of it, fully expecting to put in 90% of the effort to make it happen. That’s really the only way to be successful in my experience.

I’m from Canada and here’s something I commented awhile ago on being told to try harder to see.

This attitude is present even and optometrist and those who work with blind people.

As a kid (I’m gen z)’the first few people assigned to me by the school board were focused on getting me to just” try harder” to see using my residual vision. For most of primary school the only equipment I had was an easel so I wouldn’t hurt my neck and a magnifying glass. They also enlarged my worksheets but a lot of times they weren’t large enough or had poor contrast. I also wasn’t allowed to have a desk close enough to the board. I had one teacher who really hated me and would write in small cursive and far away from me. My vision itinerant would also come once every few weeks and make men do mazes and crosswords which are a nightmare for me because of my nystagmus. During that time I got lots of bad headaches due to eye strain and was exhausted after school from seeing (more so than usual). Eventually I ended up getting someone who was actually great and I got my first assistive tech outside of a magnifying glass. This whole deal.of getting blind people to just try harder is harmful psychologically and physically .

A few months ago, I went to an optometrist who specializes nystagmus(in hindsight I was probably referred because she was doing a study on congenital nystagmus) and her first question to me was “Are you excited to get your drivers license?”. When she was testing my vision she told me to try harder and I couldn’t because it was causing me a bad headache but she still didn’t listen. My mom had it and asked her what she was trying to accomplish by getting me to strain my eyes as it doesn’t actually help me see better and the optometrist asked her if she wanted my vision to improve. I couldn’t believe it and the rest of the appointment was just as disastrous
https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/9wmq8c/comment/eensl7v?st=JRFCMJP1&sh=d0d6876e

I am in southern California. Los Angeles county I work with the pasadena vr office. My counselor is over there, long story. It began great I took forever in school, it slowed for a bit and it’s picking up a little again. Over all the counselor is actually pretty good. I got lucky. I was going to work with another one but that counselor had no want to fun me. I got this one through a friend of mine.. I have had no issues. Currently not paying for much, I have to exhaust other funding means first but if I need it he will help me out.