Helping people with disabilities live, work, communicate, and get around on their own terms — from sign language interpreters to engineers who build custom wheelchairs.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Digital Accessibility Lead: Makes sure websites, apps, and documents work for people who are blind, deaf, or have other disabilities. Typical pay $115k.
Rehabilitation Engineer: Designs and customizes technology — wheelchairs, communication devices, smart-home controls — for people with disabilities. Typical pay $106k.
Sign Language Interpreter: Interprets between spoken English and American Sign Language for Deaf people. Typical pay $60k.
Orientation & Mobility Specialist: Teaches people who are blind or have low vision to travel safely on their own with a cane. Typical pay $65k.
Vision Rehabilitation Therapist: Teaches adults who lose their sight how to cook, read braille, use tech, and live independently. Typical pay $62k.
Assistive Technology Specialist: Matches people with disabilities to the right tools — speech devices, screen readers, adaptive keyboards. Typical pay $64k.
Special Education Advocate: Helps families get the school services their child with a disability is legally entitled to. Typical pay $58k.
ADA Coordinator: Makes sure a city, university, or company follows disability laws and provides accommodations. Typical pay $72k.
Positive Behavior Support Specialist: Designs plans to help people with developmental disabilities reduce harmful behaviors and live fuller lives. Typical pay $58k.
Day Habilitation Program Manager: Runs a day program where adults with developmental disabilities build skills, work, and socialize. Typical pay $58k.
Protection & Advocacy Investigator: Works for a state's federally required disability rights agency, investigating abuse and neglect in group homes, psychiatric hospitals and jails. Typical pay $58k.
Direct Support Professional: Helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilities with daily life, work, and community activities. Typical pay $36k.
Supported Employment Job Coach: Works alongside people with disabilities at their jobs, teaching tasks until they can do them alone. Typical pay $38k.
Independent Living Specialist: Works at a Center for Independent Living teaching skills and advocating for people with disabilities, often having a disability themselves. Typical pay $40k.
Support Service Provider (DeafBlind): Guides and describes the world to people who are both deaf and blind, using touch sign language. Typical pay $38k.
Service Dog Trainer: Trains dogs to help people with disabilities — guiding the blind, alerting to seizures, or retrieving items. Typical pay $39k.
Group Home Manager: Runs a home where several adults with disabilities live with round-the-clock staff. Typical pay $48k.
IDD Service Coordinator: Plans and coordinates services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Typical pay $47k.
Cued Speech Transliterator: Uses hand shapes near the mouth to show spoken English sounds visually for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Typical pay $48k.
Benefits & Work Incentives Planner: Helps people with disabilities understand how working will affect their Social Security and health benefits. Typical pay $52k.
Respite Care Provider: Gives family caregivers a break by caring for their child or adult with a disability for a few hours or days. Typical pay $34k.
Tactile Graphics Designer: Turns maps, charts, diagrams and science pictures into raised-line images that blind students can read with their fingers. Typical pay $48k.
Deaf Mentor: A Deaf adult who visits families with a newly diagnosed deaf baby to teach sign language and show what a full Deaf life looks like. Typical pay $40k.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.