HR assistant and HR specialist (aPHR) — 3 out of 5 stars

• What it is: The operational side of human resources: onboarding paperwork, benefits questions, personnel files, interview scheduling, and policy follow-through — the department every employee meets and few understand until it runs badly.
• Certificate or training: The aPHR (Associate Professional in Human Resources) from HRCI is designed for early-career HR staff and requires no prior HR experience and no degree. Employer training covers company specifics.
• Cost to get qualified: $400–$1,200 for aPHR prep and exam
• Time to job-ready: 3–6 months
• Typical pay: $40,000–$58,000 a year full-time with benefits
• Why it works for a blind person: HR operations is records, policy, and confidential conversation — systems and phone calls. A blind HR professional also brings something the department genuinely values: first-hand fluency in accommodations and disability inclusion.

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Start here, step by step

1. Learn the words first: HRIS is the HR information system — the personnel database. Onboarding is bringing a new hire from offer to working. Protected information in HR is nearly everything; confidentiality is the profession's first law.
2. Enter through HR-assistant, office-admin, or recruiting-coordinator roles if direct HR postings want experience; the aPHR makes your application read as intentional, not accidental.
3. Study for and pass the aPHR — employment law basics, HR operations, and employee relations, all exam-tested, no degree gate.
4. Learn the HRIS your employer runs, and verify its accessibility as you would any platform in this guide — you will process people's pay and benefits in it.
5. Build a reputation for exactness and discretion: HR staff who never leak and never misfiling are promoted by people who notice everything.
6. Grow toward generalist, benefits specialist, or HR business partner roles — or specialize in accessibility and accommodations coordination, where your expertise is rare.

How AI can help

Use AI to draft routine communications and summarize policy documents you provide. AI must never receive an employee's private data from you, and it cannot conduct a sensitive conversation — HR's trust is personal and legal.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Stable, benefits-rich, and quietly influential work — three stars because entry HR roles are competitive, some HRIS platforms lag in accessibility, and advancement to the best-paid tiers often (unfairly, but really) prefers degrees. The aPHR plus experience is the counter-argument.

Pros and cons — the honest version

Pros

• Every mid-size employer has this desk
• Accommodation expertise is a genuine specialty advantage
• Clean credential: aPHR needs no experience to sit

Cons

• Competitive entry; assistant roles fill fast
• Senior tiers sometimes demand degrees on paper
• You handle everyone's worst paperwork days