FOCUS ON: Disability Services
VIE Ability’s Rob Volker As his sight shrinks, his vision grows By Kathy Doane
I
t’s always energizing to talk with people who really like their jobs. Rob Volker is such a person. It’s not overstating to say the 45-year-old loves his job as director of e-commerce and retail at VIE Ability and the people he works with. And he gets to bring his 2-year-old service dog, Marshall, a yellow Lab, to work. Every day. When Volker started working at VIE Ability 11 years ago, it was a new social-enterprise business, known as CincySight Office, which the Cincinnati Association for the Blind & Visually Impaired (CABVI) had developed to provide additional revenue and employment opportunities to people with vision loss. Still, when Volker came through the doors of CABVI, he wasn’t looking for a job. At the urging of his wife, Lisa, he had finally accepted the fact that he needed orientation and mobility training to move around safely. He was 34 years old, out of work for close to 10 months, unable to drive, and with a wife and two small children. Life seemed pretty bleak. “I was really down on myself,” Volker admitted. He had only about eight degrees of sight (out of a typical 160 degrees horizontally and 120 degrees vertically). “I still was really good at faking what I could see,” he said. “Up until then, I was too proud to even think about using a cane, because I didn’t want people to know I couldn’t see.”
without me even realizing it, like the sound of a neighbor’s fountain,” he said. When Wajendi told him to remove the blindfold, he was standing in front of his own front door. One day Wajendi mentioned to Volker that there was a job opening at CABVI. “I think you’d be great for it,” she told him. Back then, the organization was selling office products on “a very small scale,” according to Volker. CABVI’s director of operations at the time thought the business could be expanded to generate more money for CABVI’s programs and services and also create more jobs for visually impaired folks. Volker’s position started out as part-time, but within a matter of months, he went full-time. When his manager became ill and eventually took another job, Volker became the manager. Suddenly the guy who, a year earlier, couldn’t see a future for himself, had a career path of possibilities. In 2013, that first year in business, CincySight (rebranded VIE Ability in 2016) did $50,000 in business. Last year VIE Ability’s sales reached $9.2 million. Clients include the State of Ohio, supplying office products to 82 state agencies from the Ohio Lottery to the Department of Transportation to parks and prisons and more. It also services 200 local commercial clients, many of which are nonprofit businesses and organizations.
Finding his way back home
Struggling with a genetic disease
Once Volker began working with rehabilitation therapist Sue Wajendi, his attitude began to shift. “Because I still had some sight, the training wasn’t that difficult for me,” he recalled. After walking around his own neighborhood one day, going down several side streets, Volker asked Wajendi to blindfold him during a therapy session to see if he could find his way back home. That experience was a revelation. “I used cues that my ears had picked up on
“Growing up, I had full vision,” Volker said. He got into sports at St. Jude before heading to Elder High School. “I played baseball and soccer year-round at a tournament level.” It wasn’t until age 19 that things began to change. “I couldn’t see street signs quite as well.” He decided it was time to get an eye exam and it was then that his mother told him that he had an eye condition that had been diagnosed when he was 3 years old. Because he previously
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MARCH 2025
Movers & Makers
Rob Volker and Marshall
About CABVI The Cincinnati Association for the Welfare of the Blind was founded in 1911 by a group of concerned citizens to help and provide employment for people with vision loss. Those first employment opportunities were limited to men who made brooms and mops. In the 114 years since, the organization has evolved a lot, including two more name changes, becoming the current Cincinnati Association for the Blind & Visually Impaired (CABVI) in 2004. Its programming and services have kept pace to better equip people living with vision loss to lead fulfilling and independent lives. Those include helping visually impaired individuals with resources and counseling; lessons in using adaptive technologies at home, school or work; support and programming for families with hearing-impaired infants and children; assisting low-vision individuals with devices and training to maximize their limitations; orientation and mobility training; career path employment and other services to enhance the quality of life. cincyblind.org