Protesters criticize changes to Iowa Department for the Blind training program

DES MOINES — Iowans are protesting changes made by the Iowa Department for the Blind to a long-used blindness training model provided by the state to help those with vision loss learn how to navigate the world.

Roughly 30 people marched around the IDB building in downtown Des Moines Tuesday in a demonstration organized by the National Federation of the Blind of Iowa to protest the changes made under new department leadership, which federation president Helen Mejia said has silenced concerns from department employees regarding the changes.

“We definitely also think those changes play into some of the fear that employees have about being able to speak up with the way the agency has become more political, and employees have been told that they can't speak out about their concerns,” Mejia said.

The IDB helps educate, train and empower blind Iowans to develop their independence and job skills.

The department’s new leader, Stacy Cervenka, was appointed to the role by Gov. Kim Reynolds in May and assumed leadership in July after former director Emily Wharton resigned in July of 2024 while battling cancer.

Blindness training teaches those with vision loss how to navigate their daily lives. Training can include learning how to use specialized mobility aids, including a white cane, and assistive technology and gaining a better understanding of spatial awareness and orientation.

During the demonstration, protesters chanted “keep the shades, raise the bar, shades show us who we are,” and “make IDB great again.”

At a Sept. 12 Iowa Commission for the Blind meeting, the body that sets policy for the agency, the commission revised policy language regarding the use of learning shades, also known as “sleepshades" in a handbook for the state Orientation Center for the Blind.

The commission changed the policy language for the use of sleepshades — a specialized type of eye cover used to help those with vision loss learn cane travel, daily living skills and Braille by blocking out usable vision — from “required” to “highly recommended.”

The department said the policy change was made to “expand the number of blind and low-vision Iowans the Department can serve and support,” and make access to vocational rehabilitation and independent living training more equitable.

The department cited a newly conducted survey that shows 35 percent of IDB consumers would be more likely to attend the Orientation Center where blindness training is conducted if sleepshades were recommended instead of required. The department also said many consumers choose not to pursue center-based training when they are told the shades are required, and opt for in-home instruction instead, which they say is more limited and takes nearly 40 weeks to equal one week of training at the center.

“This change gives Iowans who are blind or have low vision greater choice in their training and better serves individuals with additional disabilities and health conditions, for whom sleepshades aren’t always a safe, effective, or viable option,” the department’s Chief Information Officer Connie Mendenhall said in a statement.

“Sleepshades remain an important tool for learning non-visual techniques, but their use is now based on individual needs rather than a blanket requirement,” Mendenhall continued

But Mejia, who used to work at the department, said the survey could have gone deeper and asked IDB consumers what the barriers are for them when accessing blindness training.

“She (Cervenka) wanted to make, well is making, a significant change to a 60-year-old program that’s been a key part of what has made the department successful,” Mejia said. “Iowa has for a long time had one of the better training programs in the country that has led to more blind people being employed than in a lot of other states.”

Cervenka most recently worked as senior director of policy with the nonprofit Disability Belongs, formerly RespectAbility, in Virginia. She also was the director of public policy for the American Foundation for the Blind and served as a legislative assistant to former U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas.

She currently serves as a volunteer on the consumer advisory panel for the Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation and is a contributing writer to U.S. News and World Report and the Omaha World-Herald, according to Reynolds’ office.

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'I would not have been as effective as a rehabilitation counselor'

Jonathan Ice, of Cedar Rapids, who attended the protest Tuesday, received training at the center in 1996 and worked there until 2013.

“I'm a blind person who has all my life had a fair amount of usable vision,” Ice said. “If I had not done the sleepshade stuff, I could almost guarantee that I would not have been as effective as a rehabilitation counselor and rehabilitation teacher.”

Ice said the use of sleepshades in blindness training gives those with vision loss more confidence in their mobility and helps give everyone a better understanding of what it is like to live with complete vision loss.

“It (sleepshades) was also something that helped unify people here. One of the worries that we have about making sleepshades optional is that the great majority of blind people do have some usable vision, and if given the chance to do the job without the sleepshades, a lot of them will choose, ‘I don't feel comfortable with that.’ No one's gonna feel comfortable going into those sleepshades right away,” Ice said.

The state estimates there are roughly 54,000 Iowans who have experienced vision loss.

Mejia said she wasn’t sure about using sleepshades at first when she began similar blindness training, but the training helped her build confidence.

“It took me some time in the program to really see the benefits of it,” Mejia said. “That was before I went to college, before I went to graduate school, before I've worked for the last 15 years, and I can't imagine how I would have done those things without the training.”

Gazette Deputy Des Moines Bureau Chief Tom Barton contributed to this report.