Accessibility Services to Disabled People

What is Accessibility Services to Disabled People?

Accessibility Services to Disabled People is the employment support service run by the Training and Placement Unit of the National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Visual Disabilities (Divyangjan), Dehradun. NIEPVD is one of the nine National Institutes working under the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, and it sits at 116 Rajpur Road, Dehradun, in Uttarakhand.

The Placement Unit was set up in 1984 with the stated mission of developing model placement services for persons with blindness and low vision. It is recognised as a Special Employment Exchange, which is a specific legal category: an employment exchange that keeps a separate live register for job seekers with disabilities instead of pooling them into the general register where their applications tend to disappear. The unit's core job is to identify suitable vacancies in both the organised and unorganised sectors and to put registered candidates in front of those employers.

The single most useful thing to understand about this scheme is what it is not. Accessibility Services to Disabled People does not pay money. There is no monthly allowance, no lump sum and no loan attached to it. What a person gets is registration on the exchange, career counselling, an assessment of what work their skills fit, sponsorship of their candidature to employers who notify vacancies, and access to the job fairs the institute organises with partner foundations.

What the unit actually does

• Maintains a register of unemployed persons with blindness and low vision.
• Provides career counselling and skill matching against live vacancies.
• Sponsors candidates to employers to 20,981 sponsorships in 2024-25.
• Organises job fairs with partners. In 2024-25 two fairs produced 81 placements from 364 candidates.
• Helps beneficiaries enrol on the PM-DAKSH Rojgar Setu portal and the UDID portal.
• Enrols beneficiaries under the Niramaya health insurance scheme to 115 enrolments in 2024-25.

Who can use Accessibility Services to Disabled People?

You can register if:

• You are a person with a disability holding a valid disability certificate from the competent medical authority.
• You are unemployed and looking for work, whether in the organised or the unorganised sector.
• You can produce your educational or vocational qualifications, since the unit's method is to match your skills to notified vacancies rather than to place people at random.

The unit's register, its mandate since 1984 and the institute's own description centre on blindness and low vision. Persons with other disabilities are served by the institute's wider ecosystem and by job fairs held on campus, the September 2025 fair with Sarthak Education Trust placed 49 persons with disabilities out of 212 candidates, and the October 2025 fair with the American India Foundation placed 32 out of 152, but the core Special Employment Exchange register at NIEPVD is a visual-disability register.

You are not eligible if:

• You do not hold a disability certificate from a competent medical authority. Registration on a Special Employment Exchange requires it.
• You are an employer seeking a wage subsidy or grant. This service connects employers with candidates; it does not disburse incentives. Employers who want the EPF and ESI contribution incentive for hiring persons with disabilities must go to the relevant central scheme, not to this unit.
• You are looking for a pension or maintenance allowance. Uttarakhand's Divyang Pension Scheme and Divyang Bharan Poshan Anudaan, both run by the state Social Welfare Department through ssp.uk.gov.in, are the schemes for that.

What documents do you need?

How to register for Accessibility Services to Disabled People

1. Call the placement unit on 0135-2736712, or email niepvdplacementcell@gmail.com, and say that you want to register as a job seeker with a disability.
2. Collect your disability certificate, Aadhaar and educational certificates. Add any vocational training certificates you hold, such as COPA, data entry operator or stenography.
3. Visit NIEPVD, 116 Rajpur Road, Dehradun and complete registration on the Special Employment Exchange register with the Training and Placement Unit.
4. Sit for the career counselling and skill assessment the unit conducts, so that your profile is matched against the right category of vacancy.
5. Ask the unit to enrol you on the PM-DAKSH Rojgar Setu portal and, if you do not already have one, on the UDID portal.
6. Keep your registration live. Respond when the unit sponsors your name to an employer, and attend the job fairs it announces, those fairs are where the bulk of placements happen.

How the placement route actually works

Sponsorship is the mechanism to understand. When an employer notifies a vacancy, the unit sends the names of registered candidates whose skills fit that vacancy. The gap between 20,981 sponsorships and 99 placements in 2024-25 is not a sign that the service does not work. It reflects that one vacancy draws many sponsored names, and that a great many sponsorships are to central and state recruitment processes where the final selection is by examination. What sponsorship gives you is the notification and the eligibility trail; what gets you the job is your own preparation.

Job fairs are the higher-yield route. The two fairs held in 2024-25 converted 81 placements out of 364 candidates, a far better ratio than sponsorship, because employers at a fair are hiring on the day.

Related support at the same campus

NIEPVD runs vocational training at the same address that feeds directly into this placement service: Computer Operator and Programming Assistant (COPA), Stenography and Secretarial Assistant in Hindi, Music in vocal and instrumental streams, Gardener, and Data Entry Operator, with course lengths from three months to one year. A candidate who registers with the placement unit and holds none of these certificates is often advised to take one first, because skill matching needs something to match.

The institute separately runs a free coaching scheme for SSC, RRB, banking, insurance and PSU recruitment exams for students with 40 percent or more benchmark visual or locomotor disability, with a Rs 4,000 monthly stipend. That is a different scheme with its own notification and closing date.

Common problems and how to fix them

• No disability certificate. Get one from the district hospital's medical board first; without it, no Special Employment Exchange can register you.
• No UDID. Ask the unit, it assists with UDID portal enrolment, and UDID is increasingly the identity that reservation and benefit systems check.
• Registration goes stale. If you change your phone number or address, update it. Sponsorship letters go to the contact on record.
• Expecting money. If what you need is income support rather than a job, apply for the Uttarakhand Divyang Pension of Rs 1,500 a month on ssp.uk.gov.in instead, and use this service in parallel for employment.

Where to get help

• NIEPVD Placement Unit: 0135-2736712, niepvdplacementcell@gmail.com
• NIEPVD Dehradun: 116 Rajpur Road, Dehradun
• Uttarakhand Social Welfare Department helpline: 1800-180-4236, for state disability pensions and grants

Registration is free. No agent can charge you for a place on the exchange register or a slot at a job fair.