Self-efficacy, Identity, and Inclusion in Counseling Psychology: The Lived Experiences of Visually Impaired Professionals

Introduction

Understanding the lived experiences of visually impaired professionals (VIPs) is essential for advancing workplace inclusion and deepening psychological insight into how individuals navigate bias, identity, and agency within ableist environments. Although research has documented accessibility barriers, employment disparities, and persistent attitudinal bias, far less is known about how VIPs describe their self-efficacy and the psychological processes that support adaptation and success across professional settings (Huang & Wang, 2023; Kerdar et al., 2024). This study addresses that gap by examining how VIPs interpret their professional experiences through the interrelated components of self-esteem, agency, and goal-directedness.

Despite technological advances, workplace accessibility remains inconsistent, and VIPs continue to encounter structural and interpersonal barriers that influence performance, advancement, and belonging (American Foundation for the Blind [AFB], 2023; Thurston & Dunlop, 2024). These conditions underscore the need for research that centers VIPs’ perspectives and identifies mechanisms that support resilience, motivation, and professional identity. Using a phenomenological approach, this study foregrounds VIPs’ voices and provides insight into how they navigate workplace demands, negotiate bias, and cultivate adaptive strategies.

While these issues are often framed within industrial-organizational psychology, they also reflect core concerns in counseling psychology, including identity development, emotional processing, meaning-making, and relational experience. VIPs’ descriptions of self-efficacy are not merely reflections of workplace performance; they reveal how individuals interpret exclusion, sustain self-worth, and construct coherent identities in the face of systemic barriers. Counseling psychology’s emphasis on subjective experience, holistic wellbeing, and the relational context of human development offers a critical lens for understanding these processes.

The study is grounded in disability theory, social cognitive theory, resilience theory, and self-determination theory, offering a multidimensional framework for understanding how environmental conditions, personal beliefs, and social contexts shape VIPs’ professional experiences. These perspectives illuminate how VIPs develop self-efficacy, leverage assistive technologies, and pursue meaningful career goals despite systemic constraints. Integrating these frameworks with counselling psychology’s humanistic and experiential traditions highlights the emotional and relational dimensions of navigating ableist environments.

This research contributes to industrial-organizational psychology by expanding empirical understanding of workplace inclusion and identifying factors that influence VIPs’ engagement, persistence, and career development. However, its contribution to counseling psychology is equally significant. The findings deepen understanding of how VIPs construct self-efficacy, navigate identity-related challenges, and cultivate resilience in the face of systemic barriers. These insights can inform therapeutic practice by helping counseling psychologists support clients in strengthening agency, processing experiences of bias, and developing adaptive strategies for professional and personal well-being. The study also underscores the importance of culturally responsive, disability-affirming approaches within counseling relationships.

Literature Review

Employment Disparities and Systemic Barriers

Visually impaired professionals (VIPs) continue to experience disproportionately lower employment rates due to intertwined structural, attitudinal, and technological barriers (Bhaskar et al., 2024; Chhabra, 2021). These disparities reflect longstanding inequities in hiring, advancement, and workplace participation. While prior research has documented these patterns, counselling psychology perspectives highlight the psychological consequences of such inequities, including diminished self-efficacy, identity disruption, and chronic vigilance in navigating ableist environments. Understanding these disparities, therefore, requires not only structural analysis but also attention to the emotional and relational processes through which VIPs interpret exclusion and sustain motivation.

Attitudinal Barriers, Bias, and Workplace Climate

Employer perceptions remain among the most persistent obstacles. Competence is often implicitly associated with sightedness, while visual impairment is linked to reduced capability despite evidence to the contrary (EEOC, 2023; Supersense, 2021). These biases manifest in reluctance to hire, exclusion from development opportunities, and inequitable evaluations (AFB, 2024; Lindsay & Osten, 2022).

Counseling psychology research emphasizes how such climates erode psychological safety, contribute to internalized doubt, and shape relational dynamics at work. Subtle forms of discrimination, such as overhelping, infantilizing communication, or excessive scrutiny, can undermine self-worth and belonging, reinforcing inequities in advancement and emotional well-being (Ashley et al., 2023). These relational experiences are central to understanding how VIPs construct meaning and navigate identity in professional settings.

Self-Efficacy, Identity, and Personal Development

Self-efficacy and identity development play central roles in academic and professional success for VIPs. Limited access to resources and societal misconceptions can undermine confidence, particularly in early educational experiences (Goodrich et al., 2023). Conversely, inclusive instruction, mentorship, and assistive technologies strengthen self-belief, agency, and independence. Counseling psychology perspectives highlight how self-efficacy is shaped through relational affirmation, emotional processing, and meaning-making processes that influence how individuals interpret challenges and envision their professional futures. In workplace contexts, higher self-esteem supports advocacy, pursuit of leadership, and willingness to request accommodations (Shah & Foster, 2022). These processes reflect ongoing negotiation of identity, competence, and belonging, underscoring the need for psychologically informed support systems.

Legal Protections and Policy Limitations

Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides essential protections, enforcement remains inconsistent. Many VIPs are unaware of their rights or fear retaliation, while employers often misunderstand legal obligations (Bell & Mino, 2022; EEOC, 2023). Policy gaps, administrative burdens, and rapid technological change further limit the effectiveness of legal frameworks (Hersh, 2022; Ricciardelli & Barner, 2023). Counselling psychology adds an important dimension by examining how these systemic inconsistencies affect emotional wellbeing, perceived agency, and trust in institutional support. When legal protections fail to translate into lived inclusion, VIPs may experience frustration, resignation, or identity conflict, psychological outcomes that shape their engagement with work and advocacy.

Technological Barriers and Assistive Innovations

Despite technological progress, many digital platforms remain inaccessible due to poor contrast, incompatible interfaces, and complex navigation (Kerdar et al., 2024; Okolo et al., 2024). Assistive technologies, such as screen readers, braille displays, and AI-powered navigation tools, enhance accessibility and independence (Amore et al., 2023; Guerreiro et al., 2022). However, employer resistance and training gaps limit effective implementation (Kruse et al., 2024). From a counseling psychology perspective, technology is not merely a functional tool but a psychological resource that supports autonomy, competence, and self-determination. When technology fails or is withheld, VIPs may experience diminished agency and increased emotional labor, highlighting the relational and motivational dimensions of accessibility.

Support Systems and Inclusive Practices

Family, mentors, and professional networks provide emotional and practical support that enhance employment outcomes (Martiniello et al., 2023). Workplace accommodations and collaborative employer–employee dialogue enable VIPs to perform job duties effectively (Dong et al., 2021). Counseling psychology emphasizes the relational nature of support, noting that affirmation, empathy, and mutual recognition strengthen resilience and identity coherence. Disability-affirming cultures and DEI initiatives foster belonging and reduce bias (Romansky et al., 2021). These relational contexts shape how VIPs interpret challenges, sustain motivation, and construct meaning around their professional roles.

Intersectionality and Diverse Experiences

Intersectionality reveals how overlapping identities, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, LGBTQ+ identity, or immigrant background, shape unique experiences of discrimination and opportunity (Crenshaw, 1989; Frederick, 2021). VIPs with multiple marginalized identities often face compounded barriers in employment, education, and social inclusion (Bassey et al., 2024). Counseling psychology frameworks emphasize how intersecting identities influence emotional experience, relational dynamics, and meaning-making. Understanding these complexities requires culturally responsive, psychologically informed approaches that attend to both structural inequities and the subjective experience of navigating them.

Counseling Psychology Perspectives on Identity, Meaning-Making, and Relational Experience

Counseling psychology emphasizes subjective experience, identity development, emotional processing, and relational meaning-making, domains highly relevant to VIPs’ workplace experiences. Humanistic and experiential approaches highlight how individuals interpret exclusion, negotiate self-worth, and cultivate resilience in the face of systemic barriers.

Relational-cultural theory underscores the importance of connection, recognition, and mutual empathy in fostering psychological well-being. These perspectives illuminate how VIPs make sense of bias, sustain agency, and construct professional identities within ableist environments. Integrating these frameworks into VIP research strengthens understanding of the emotional and relational dimensions of workplace inclusion.

Conceptual Gaps and Need for the Present Study

Although existing research documents barriers and accommodations, far less is known about how VIPs experience self-efficacy, identity, and inclusion at psychological and relational levels. Prior studies rarely examine meaning-making processes, emotional responses to exclusion, or the relational dynamics that shape resilience. Moreover, counseling psychology perspectives remain underrepresented in VIP research. This study addresses these gaps by exploring how VIPs interpret their lived experiences through the interrelated components of self-efficacy, identity, and inclusion, offering insights that can inform both organizational practice and counseling psychology interventions.

Method

Introduction

This qualitative phenomenological study explored how visually impaired professionals (VIPs) describe their lived experiences of self-efficacy, including self-esteem, agency, and goal-directedness, and the professional challenges they encounter. VIPs face physical, social, and structural barriers that shape workplace participation and advancement (AFB, n.d.; Battle for Blindness, 2023). Counseling psychology perspectives emphasize the importance of understanding how individuals interpret these barriers, make meaning of exclusion, and sustain identity coherence in the face of systemic constraints. This section outlines the research design, researcher role, methodology, participant selection, instrumentation, data collection, analysis, trustworthiness, and ethical procedures.

Research Design and Rationale

A qualitative design grounded in Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method was selected to capture the essence of VIPs’ lived experiences (Creswell & Poth, 2023; Giorgi, 2009, 2023; Moustakas, 1994). This approach, rooted in Husserlian phenomenology, provides a systematic and rigorous framework for identifying the essential psychological meanings embedded in participants’ descriptions. The method aligns directly with the research question, which seeks to understand how VIPs articulate self-efficacy and its component elements within workplace contexts.

Although participants’ narratives naturally contain story-based elements, these were treated as contextual expressions of lived experience rather than as a separate narrative methodology. Narrative features were used only to enrich phenomenological meaning, consistent with descriptive phenomenology’s emphasis on participants’ first-person accounts. This distinction is important for counseling psychology, where narrative and phenomenological traditions both inform understanding of identity, meaning-making, and emotional experience.

The guiding research question asked how VIPs articulate self-efficacy and its component elements within diverse workplace contexts.

Role of the Researcher

The researcher served as both observer and engaged participant, fostering trust and openness while maintaining reflexive awareness (Burke et al., 2024; Creswell & Poth, 2023). Reflexive journaling and peer debriefing helped mitigate bias and preserve authenticity in interpreting participants’ narratives (Grant et al., 2024; Tenny et al., 2023). Counseling psychology emphasizes the relational nature of qualitative interviewing, and the researcher’s role includes attending to emotional tone, relational dynamics, and participants’ meaning-making processes. Reflexivity supported awareness of how the researcher’s assumptions, identity, and professional background could shape interpretation.

Methodology

Data collection relied on qualitative tools suited to phenomenological inquiry. In-depth semi-structured interviews served as the primary method, enabling participants to describe their experiences in rich, detailed, first-person terms (Merriam & Tisdell, 2023). Observational notes and reflexive journaling complemented the interviews by supporting the researcher’s reflexivity and contextual awareness. These practices align with counseling psychology’s emphasis on relational attunement, emotional sensitivity, and respect for participants’ meaning-making processes.

Preliminary coding was used only to organize the data and identify potential meaning units; however, all analytic interpretation followed Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method, which emphasizes psychological transformation of meaning units and synthesis of essential structures (Giorgi, 2023). This ensured methodological coherence and alignment between data collection and analysis.

Participant Selection

Purposive sampling ensured inclusion of VIPs whose experiences aligned with the study’s objectives (Creswell & Poth, 2023). Eligibility criteria included visual impairment, current employment, at least one year of work experience, and a minimum of an associate’s degree. Eleven participants were recruited through organizations, social media, and referrals. This sample size aligns with phenomenological standards for depth and saturation (Ng et al., 2025; Waxman, 2023). Recruitment continued until no new themes emerged, ensuring analytic completeness (Moustakas, 1994). Counseling psychology perspectives emphasize the importance of capturing diverse lived experiences, particularly when exploring identity, resilience, and relational dynamics. The sampling strategy supported this goal by including participants across multiple industries, identities, and career stages.

Instrumentation

Interview Protocol and Demographic Questionnaire

Instrumentation included a semi-structured interview guide and a demographic questionnaire. Open-ended questions encouraged participants to describe workplace experiences, challenges, and self-efficacy beliefs in their own words (Thomas & Morgan, 2021; Waxman, 2023). The protocol was informed by disability theory, self-determination theory, social cognitive theory, resilience theory, and self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1986; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2022; Zhao & Ji, 2024). Counseling psychology’s emphasis on subjective experience and identity development informed the emotional and relational sensitivity of the interview questions.

Accessibility Adaptations

All instruments were adapted for accessibility, including large print, braille, and screen-reader–compatible formats (Kelly & Sloan, 2022; Shinohara et al., 2022). These adaptations reflect counseling psychology’s commitment to equitable participation and respect for client autonomy.

Basis for Instrument Development and Content Validity

Instrument development drew on established qualitative frameworks and extensive literature (Creswell & Poth, 2023; Moustakas, 1994). Content validity was strengthened through expert review, theoretical alignment, and item-level evaluation for clarity and relevance (Merriam & Tisdell, 2023).

Theoretical Foundations

The interview protocol was shaped by multiple theoretical lenses, including disability theory (Praslova, 2023; Troper et al., 2024), social cognitive theory (Biswalo, 2024; Smith & Lee, 2024), resilience theory (Steverson & Crudden, 2023), self-determination theory (Alhaj et al., 2024), and self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1986; Santuzzi & Waltz, 2022). These frameworks align with counseling psychology’s focus on agency, identity, motivation, and relational context.

Field Test of the Interview Protocol

A field test with a volunteer with macular degeneration assessed clarity, accessibility, and emotional sensitivity (Omam et al., 2023). The 84-minute session revealed the need to refine phrasing, adjust question flow, and simplify terminology (Villalba, 2022). Feedback-informed revisions that improved inclusivity and narrative depth. Field test data were excluded from the main study (Fernandes et al., 2025). The field test also supported counseling-psychology alignment by ensuring that questions were emotionally attuned and respectful of participants’ lived experiences.

Procedures for Recruitment, Participation, and Data Collection

Recruitment materials emphasized voluntary participation and transparent communication (Tenny et al., 2023). Informed consent outlined study purpose, procedures, risks, confidentiality, and participant rights (Creswell & Poth, 2023). Interviews were conducted via Zoom or telephone, lasted approximately 90 minutes, and were audio-recorded. Transcription was completed using Microsoft Word’s transcription feature and manually verified (Bree & Gallagher, 2022). Debriefing and optional follow-up ensured ethical closure.

Counseling psychology emphasizes relational presence, emotional safety, and respect for participants’ meaning-making. These principles guided the interview process, including pacing, tone, and responsiveness to participants’ emotional cues.

Data Analysis Plan

Data analysis followed Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method, which involves:

• Adopting the phenomenological attitude and bracketing presuppositions (Moustakas, 1994)

  • Reading each transcript holistically to gain an overall sense of the experience (Smith & Lee, 2024)

  • Identifying meaning units that capture significant experiential elements (Zhao & Ji, 2024)

  • Transforming meaning units into psychologically relevant statements (McDonnall & Tatch, 2021)

  • Synthesizing transformed meanings into a coherent description of the phenomenon’s essential structure (Wertz, 2023)

Discrepant cases were examined to strengthen analytic rigor (Sundler et al., 2022). This analytic process ensured full alignment between the research question, data collection, and phenomenological interpretation. Counselling psychology’s emphasis on meaning-making, identity, and emotional experience informed the interpretive lens used during transformation of meaning units.

Trustworthiness

Credibility was supported through prolonged engagement with the data and iterative engagement with participants’ narratives. The researcher returned repeatedly to the transcripts during analysis, checking emerging meanings against the original descriptions to ensure that interpretations remained grounded in participants’ words (Creswell & Poth, 2023). Reflexive journaling documented the researcher’s assumptions, emotional responses, and decision points, which were then explicitly considered during meaning-unit transformation to reduce interpretive bias (Merriam & Tisdell, 2023).

Peer debriefing sessions with qualitative colleagues provided external scrutiny of coding decisions, theme labels, and the final structural description, leading to refinements in how self-efficacy and inclusion were articulated. Thick description of participants’ contexts and experiences supports transferability by enabling readers to judge relevance to their own settings (Tracy, 2022; Wertz, 2023). Dependability and confirmability were enhanced through an audit trail that recorded analytic steps, coding revisions, and theme development, allowing the analysis’s logic to be traced and evaluated (Ahmed, 2024; Noble & Smith, 2025; Stalmeijer et al., 2024).

These procedures align with counseling psychology’s emphasis on transparency, reflexivity, and respect for participants’ lived experience.

Ethical Procedures

Ethical safeguards included informed consent, confidentiality protections, secure data storage, and accessibility accommodations (Creswell & Poth, 2023; Moustakas, 1994). Data were anonymized using pseudonyms or participant codes and stored securely with encryption and password protection (Tenny et al., 2023). Only the researcher had access to identifiable information, which was kept separate from transcripts and analytic files. All procedures adhered to Institutional Review Board (IRB) requirements and ethical guidelines for research involving human participants. These practices reflect counselling psychology’s commitment to participant wellbeing, autonomy, and dignity.

Summary

This section outlined the methodological framework for exploring VIPs’ lived experiences of self-efficacy and professional challenges. The phenomenological design, rigorous instrumentation, systematic data collection, Giorgi-based analysis, and robust ethical safeguards established a strong foundation for the findings presented in the results section. Counselling psychology perspectives informed the study’s emphasis on meaning-making, identity, emotional experience, and relational context.

Results

Introduction

This phenomenological study explored how visually impaired professionals (VIPs) describe their lived experiences of self-efficacy, including self-esteem, agency, goal-directedness, and the professional challenges they encounter (Schoenberg et al., 2024; Takona, 2023). Guided by the central research question—how VIPs articulate self-efficacy within diverse workplace contexts—this section presents findings derived exclusively through Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method.

The Results section is organized to reflect the phenomenological structure of the analysis: contextual descriptions of participants and settings, analytic procedures grounded in meaning-unit transformation, and the essential psychological structures that emerged from participants’ descriptions. This structure maintains methodological coherence and provides transparency in how essential meanings were derived from raw experiential data. Counselling psychology perspectives inform the interpretation of these findings by highlighting the emotional, relational, and identity-related processes embedded in participants’ descriptions.

Setting

Participants worked across healthcare, education, law, business, technology, and nonprofit sectors, each with varying levels of accessibility and cultural responsiveness (Islam & Akhter, 2022; Patel & Thompson, 2024). Organizational attitudes toward disability shaped the degree of support participants received, influencing their ability to perform tasks, collaborate with colleagues, and pursue advancement opportunities. Geographic diversity across six U.S. states introduced variation in policy environments and accessibility standards (Briscoe & Hall, 2023; Randel et al., 2022).

Participants’ descriptions revealed how environmental conditions shaped their daily experiences. For example, one participant noted, “The building layout changes every few months, and no one tells me. I’m always relearning the space.” Another shared, “My supervisor means well, but they assume I can’t handle certain tasks before I even try.” These meaning units reflected how physical and interpersonal environments influenced self-efficacy, emotional safety, and perceived legitimacy.

Transformed meaning units indicated that participants experienced accessibility barriers not only as logistical challenges but as psychological constraints that required constant adaptation. These experiences supported the essential structure that inclusive climates enhance belonging and self-efficacy (Flick, 2022; Schoenberg et al., 2024). Counseling psychology perspectives highlight how environmental conditions shape emotional regulation, identity negotiation, and relational trust—processes that were evident in participants’ descriptions. Interviews occurred during a period of workplace stability, allowing participants to reflect without acute disruptions.

Demographics

The study included 11 visually impaired professionals (VIPs) with diverse educational, professional, and identity backgrounds. Participants ranged in age from their late twenties to early sixties and represented early-career through senior-level roles. All held at least an associate’s degree, with several completing graduate or doctoral training (Islam & Akhter, 2022). Participants identified across multiple gender identities and racial or ethnic groups, with several describing intersectional experiences that shaped their sense of inclusion and professional identity (Patel & Thompson, 2024). Employment settings included corporations, nonprofits, educational institutions, and consulting roles, each offering distinct accessibility conditions.

Participants’ demographic descriptions often carried psychological meaning. For example, one participant shared, “Being a Black woman with low vision means I’m always proving myself twice, once for race, once for disability.” Another noted, “I’m the only blind person in my department, so I feel like I’m representing all of us.” These meaning units reflected how demographic identities intersected with workplace expectations, shaping self-efficacy and perceived legitimacy.

Transformed meaning units indicated that demographic characteristics were not merely background variables but active components of lived experience, influencing how participants interpreted bias, recognition, and belonging. Counseling psychology perspectives emphasize how intersecting identities shape emotional experience, relational dynamics, and meaning-making processes, as evident in participants’ descriptions. These insights contributed to the essential structures by highlighting how identity and social location shaped participants’ experiences of competence, agency, and relational affirmation.

Data Collection

Following Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, participants were recruited through professional networks and online groups for visually impaired individuals (Briscoe & Hall, 2023). Eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted via mobile phone, lasting 80–111 minutes (M = 96 minutes). Interviews produced 615 single-spaced transcript pages. Transcription was completed using Microsoft Word’s dictation tool and verified manually for accuracy (Omara, 2023).

Participants’ descriptions during the interviews often revealed immediate psychological meaning. For example, one participant began by saying, “I’ve never been asked these questions before; it feels good to finally talk about this.” Another noted, “I want people to understand what it’s really like, not just what they assume.” These meaning units reflected participants’ desire for recognition and the emotional significance of being invited to share their lived experiences.

Probing questions supported depth and clarity, while field notes and reflexive journaling captured contextual and emotional nuances (Levitt, 2022). For instance, the researcher documented moments when participants paused, laughed, or lowered their voice—cues that later informed the transformation of meaning units into psychologically relevant statements. Counseling psychology emphasizes relational attunement and emotional presence, both of which guided the interview process.

Transformed meaning units indicated that the interview process itself functioned as a space where participants articulated self-efficacy, identity, and belonging in ways they had not previously verbalized. This contributed to the essential structures by highlighting how participants made sense of their experiences when given time, attention, and an accessible format.

Saturation was reached after the eleventh interview, with no new conceptual insights emerging (Chand, 2025; Guest et al., 2023). All data were stored securely in a password-protected repository consistent with qualitative data protection standards.

Data Analysis

Data analysis followed Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method, which emphasizes the identification of the essential psychological meanings embedded in participants’ descriptions (Islam & Akhter, 2022; Levitt, 2022). Each transcript was first read holistically to gain an overall sense of the participant’s experience. The text was then segmented into meaning units, marking shifts in psychological significance (Zhao & Ji, 2024).

Below are examples illustrating the analytic progression:

Example 1: Meaning Unit → Transformed Meaning Unit

Meaning unit:
“People jump in to help before I even open my mouth. It makes me feel like they don’t think I’m capable.”

Transformed meaning unit:
The participant experiences unsolicited assistance as a challenge to their competence and autonomy, undermining self-efficacy and professional identity.

Contribution to essential structure:
This meaning unit supported the essential structure Silent Erasure of Competence, revealing how subtle interpersonal behaviors shape psychological experience.

Example 2: Meaning Unit → Transformed Meaning Unit

Meaning unit:
“I’ve learned to regulate my reactions. I can’t show frustration because it gets interpreted as weakness.”

Transformed meaning unit:
The participant engages in emotional regulation as a strategic response to bias, demonstrating resilience as an intentional, protective process.

Contribution to essential structure:
This meaning unit contributed to Resilience as Resistance, highlighting agency expressed through emotional discipline.

Example 3: Meaning Unit → Transformed Meaning Unit

Meaning unit:
“When my team trusts me enough to lead a project, I feel like I belong here.”

Transformed meaning unit:
Belonging emerges when recognition and trust affirm the participant’s competence, strengthening self-efficacy through relational validation.

Contribution to essential structure:
This meaning unit informed Belonging Through Advocacy, illustrating belonging as a co-constructed relational experience.

After meaning units were transformed into psychologically relevant statements, they were synthesized into essential structures that captured the invariant meanings across participants (Wertz, 2023). Reflexive journaling documented interpretive decisions, including moments when the researcher reconsidered assumptions or reevaluated meaning-unit boundaries. Peer debriefing provided external scrutiny of transformations and essential structures, leading to refinements in how self-efficacy and belonging were articulated. Counseling psychology perspectives informed the interpretive lens by emphasizing identity, emotional experience, and relational meaning-making.

A discrepant case, one participant who consistently experienced recognition and trust, was incorporated to refine the essential structure Belonging Through Advocacy, ensuring that the final structure reflected both common and divergent experiences.

Closing Synthesis of Themes

Together, these essential structures illustrate how VIPs navigate the interplay of bias, resilience, and relational belonging. The findings reveal that self-efficacy is not solely an individual belief, but a relational and contextual process shaped by recognition, trust, and emotional safety. Counseling psychology perspectives deepen this understanding by emphasizing how individuals make meaning of exclusion, negotiate identity, and cultivate agency within relational systems. The themes collectively demonstrate that workplace inclusion requires more than accommodations, it requires environments that affirm competence, support resilience, and foster authentic belonging.

Evidence of Trustworthiness

Credibility was supported through prolonged engagement, iterative analysis, and peer debriefing (McLeod, 2024; Rashid, 2025). Analytic memoing documented interpretive decisions and ensured alignment with the phenomenological framework. Thick description of participant roles, organizational contexts, and accessibility conditions enabled transferability (Erismann et al., 2021; Stahl & King, 2022). Dependability was strengthened through an audit trail documenting interview procedures, coding iterations, and theme development. Confirmability was supported through reflexive journaling and peer debriefing (Guest et al., 2023; Islam & Akhter, 2022).

These procedures align with counseling psychology’s emphasis on transparency, reflexivity, and respect for participants’ lived experience. The integration of emotional, relational, and identity-focused interpretive practices further strengthened the trustworthiness of the findings.

Discussion

Introduction

This study explored how visually impaired professionals (VIPs) describe their lived experiences of self-efficacy, including self-esteem, agency, goal-directedness, and professional challenges. Using Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method, three essential themes emerged: Silent Erasure of Competence, Resilience as Resistance, and Belonging Through Advocacy. Together, these themes demonstrate that self-efficacy is not solely an internal belief system but a relational and systemic process shaped by bias, adaptation, and organizational climate. The findings also highlight the emotional, identity-related, and relational dimensions of navigating ableist environments—domains central to counselling psychology. This section interprets the themes, situates them within existing scholarship, outlines limitations, and offers implications for theory, practice, and future research.

Interpretation of the Findings

Silent Erasure of Competence

The first essential structure, Silent Erasure of Competence, reflects how subtle interpersonal behaviors and organizational assumptions undermine VIPs’ sense of legitimacy. Participants described experiences of unsolicited assistance, credential doubt, and heightened scrutiny—interactions that communicated diminished expectations and reinforced ableist assumptions. These findings align with research documenting how microinvalidations and benevolent ableism erode confidence, autonomy, and perceived competence among disabled professionals.

From a counseling psychology perspective, these experiences carry significant implications for identity development and emotional well-being. Relational-cultural theory emphasizes that chronic exposure to invalidating interactions can lead to disconnection, self-doubt, and internalized stigma. Participants’ descriptions illustrate how relational micro-messages shape self-efficacy by signaling whether one is viewed as capable, trustworthy, or fully professional. The psychological labor required to counteract these messages,anticipating doubt, over-preparing, or masking frustration, reflects the ongoing negotiation of identity within environments that implicitly question competence.

Silent Erasure of Competence also highlights the systemic nature of ableism. Participants’ experiences were not isolated incidents but patterned interactions embedded in workplace culture. This reinforces scholarship arguing that self-efficacy is influenced not only by personal mastery but by relational and contextual factors that affirm or undermine one’s sense of agency. The findings extend this work by showing how VIPs interpret these relational dynamics and how subtle forms of bias shape their emotional experience, professional identity, and sense of belonging.

Resilience as Resistance

Resilience emerged as an active, intentional form of resistance rather than passive endurance. Participants described emotional regulation, adaptive workflow strategies, and leadership behaviors, including mentoring and policy advocacy. These actions demonstrate how VIPs transform exclusion into purposeful engagement, reinforcing theories of resilience that emphasize agency, cognitive flexibility, and meaning-making. The findings extend existing research by illustrating how resilience functions simultaneously as a coping mechanism and a catalyst for organizational change. Participants’ strategies reveal how self-efficacy is strengthened through repeated acts of adaptation and advocacy.

Belonging Through Advocacy

Belonging was described as co-constructed through recognition, trust, and relational affirmation. Participants emphasized moments when they were treated as equals, invited to contribute, or supported without requiring proof of competence. This theme aligns with scholarship on psychological safety and inclusive leadership, suggesting that belonging emerges when organizational cultures validate expertise rather than question it. The findings also highlight how VIPs actively shape their environments through mentorship, advocacy, and cultural contribution. Belonging, therefore, is both an outcome of supportive climates and a leadership practice enacted by VIPs themselves.

Synthesis of Themes

Together, the themes illustrate that self-efficacy for VIPs is shaped by ongoing negotiation between internal beliefs and external conditions. Silent Erasure of Competence reveals the barriers that undermine confidence; Resilience as Resistance demonstrates how VIPs counter these barriers through agency and adaptation; and Belonging Through Advocacy shows how relational affirmation strengthens identity and fosters inclusion. These findings contribute to disability theory, social cognitive theory, resilience theory, and self-determination theory by emphasizing the interplay between systemic constraints and personal empowerment.

Limitations

Several execution-level limitations shaped the implementation of this study. First, data collection relied on telephone interviews, which limited access to nonverbal cues such as facial expression, gesture, and posture. Although participants’ verbal descriptions were rich and detailed, the absence of visual and embodied cues may have constrained the ability to interpret emotional nuance and relational dynamics. Counseling psychology emphasizes the importance of relational attunement, and the audio-only format required the researcher to rely more heavily on tone, pacing, and verbal content to understand participants’ emotional experience.

Second, scheduling constraints influenced the timing and flow of interviews. Several participants required rescheduling due to work demands, health considerations, or accessibility needs. These adjustments occasionally resulted in longer intervals between interviews, which may have affected the researcher’s immersion in the data during early stages of collection. While reflexive journaling helped maintain continuity, the staggered schedule introduced variability in the researcher’s engagement with participants’ narratives.

Third, transcription accuracy presented challenges. Automated transcription tools produced errors in punctuation, homophones, and proper nouns, requiring extensive manual correction. This process increased the risk of minor transcription inconsistencies, although each transcript was reviewed multiple times to ensure fidelity. Because phenomenological analysis depends on precise language, even small transcription errors required careful attention to avoid misinterpretation of meaning units.

Fourth, environmental distractions occasionally affected interview quality. Background noise, connectivity issues, and interruptions required participants to repeat statements or pause their narratives. These disruptions may have influenced the depth or spontaneity of certain descriptions. Although participants remained engaged, environmental noise may have influenced the emotional tone or pacing of their responses.

Fifth, participant attrition occurred during recruitment. Several individuals expressed interest but did not complete the scheduling process, and one participant withdrew before the interview. While the final sample met phenomenological standards for depth and saturation, the loss of potential participants may have reduced the diversity of perspectives represented in the study.

Finally, the researcher’s dual role as interviewer and analyst introduced the possibility of interpretive bias. Although reflexive journaling, peer debriefing, and adherence to Giorgi’s method helped mitigate this risk, the researcher’s professional background and personal assumptions may have influenced the transformation of meaning units. Counselling psychology acknowledges that researcher subjectivity is both a resource and a potential limitation, requiring ongoing reflexive awareness throughout the analytic process.

Recommendations

The findings of this study point to several recommendations for counseling psychology, organizational practice, and broader systems that influence the professional experiences of visually impaired professionals (VIPs). These recommendations emphasize the relational, emotional, and identity-related dimensions of workplace inclusion and highlight the need for environments that affirm competence, support resilience, and foster belonging.

1. Strengthen Counseling Psychology Training and Practice

Counseling psychologists should receive enhanced training in disability-affirming practice, including the relational and systemic dynamics that shape VIPs’ experiences. Practitioners should incorporate identity-focused interventions, support clients in navigating microinvalidations, and help them develop adaptive strategies for emotional regulation, boundary-setting, and advocacy. Integrating disability studies perspectives into counselling curricula would further strengthen clinicians’ ability to address ableism as a contextual factor influencing wellbeing.

2. Promote Disability-Affirming Organizational Cultures

Organizations should adopt policies and practices that explicitly affirm the competence and leadership potential of VIPs. This includes training supervisors and colleagues to recognize and interrupt subtle invalidations, avoid assumptions about ability, and engage in collaborative accommodation processes. Creating cultures where VIPs are consulted rather than presumed about their needs can reduce the silent erosion of competence and enhance relational trust.

3. Expand Accessibility Beyond Compliance

Accessibility should be understood as an ongoing relational and cultural commitment rather than a checklist of legal requirements. Organizations should regularly evaluate digital platforms, workflows, and communication practices to ensure they support autonomy and competence. Involving VIPs in accessibility planning and decision-making can improve effectiveness and foster a sense of ownership and belonging.

4. Support Leadership Development and Advocacy Pathways

Participants described belonging as emerging through recognition, trust, and opportunities to influence organizational culture. Organizations should create structured pathways for VIPs to assume leadership roles, contribute to accessibility initiatives, and mentor others. These opportunities not only affirm competence but also strengthen organizational inclusion through lived expertise.

5. Enhance Peer Support and Mentorship Networks

Peer mentorship emerged as a powerful resilience strategy. Professional associations, disability organizations, and workplaces should develop mentorship programs that connect VIPs across industries and career stages. These networks can provide emotional support, share adaptive strategies, and reduce the isolation that often accompanies subtle forms of bias.

6. Encourage Reflexive Supervision and Consultation

Supervisors and managers should engage in ongoing reflexive practice to examine how their assumptions, communication patterns, and decision-making processes influence VIPs’ experiences. Reflexive supervision can help leaders identify unintentional microinvalidations, strengthen relational attunement, and create more psychologically safe environments.

7. Integrate Disability Perspectives into DEI Initiatives

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs should explicitly incorporate disability as a core dimension of identity. Many participants described feeling overlooked in DEI conversations, which contributed to feelings of invisibility. Integrating disability perspectives into DEI frameworks can promote more holistic inclusion and ensure that accessibility and belonging are treated as organizational priorities.

8. Foster Collaborative Accommodation Processes

Accommodation processes should be relational, flexible, and ongoing. Rather than relying on standardized procedures, organizations should engage VIPs in collaborative dialogue to identify supports that enhance autonomy and competence. This approach aligns with counseling psychology’s emphasis on mutuality and shared decision-making.

9. Encourage Research on Relational and Emotional Dimensions of Disability

Future research should explore the emotional and relational processes that shape the professional experiences of VIPs, including how microinvalidations, advocacy, and belonging influence identity development and well-being. Studies that integrate counseling psychology frameworks can deepen understanding of how individuals make meaning of exclusion and cultivate resilience within relational systems.

Conclusion

This study examined how visually impaired professionals (VIPs) describe their lived experiences of self-efficacy, including self-esteem, agency, goal-directedness, and the professional challenges they encounter. Using Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method, three essential structures emerged: Silent Erasure of Competence, Resilience as Resistance, and Belonging Through Advocacy. Together, these structures illuminate the relational, emotional, and systemic forces that shape VIPs’ professional lives.

The findings demonstrate that self-efficacy is not solely an internal belief but a dynamic process influenced by interpersonal interactions, organizational climate, and identity-related meaning-making. Participants described how subtle invalidations eroded their sense of competence, how resilience required intentional emotional and cognitive labor, and how belonging emerged through advocacy, recognition, and relational trust. These insights extend existing scholarship by highlighting the psychological and relational dimensions of workplace inclusion, emphasizing that VIPs’ experiences cannot be understood apart from the environments in which they work.

For counseling psychology, the study underscores the importance of disability-affirming practice, relational attunement, and attention to the emotional impact of navigating ableist systems. Counselors, supervisors, and organizational leaders can play a critical role in supporting VIPs by fostering environments that affirm competence, encourage advocacy, and promote authentic belonging. The findings also highlight the need for systemic change, including more inclusive organizational cultures, collaborative accommodation processes, and leadership pathways that recognize VIPs’ expertise and contributions.

Ultimately, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how VIPs construct meaning, sustain agency, and cultivate identity within professional contexts. By centering their lived experiences, the research affirms the importance of relational connection, psychological safety, and structural inclusion in supporting self-efficacy and well-being. Continued inquiry into the emotional and relational dimensions of disability in the workplace will further strengthen psychology’s capacity to promote equity, empowerment, and human flourishing.