The earlier we can touch the life of a child with a developmental disability, the greater the...
LEARN MOREThe SSA will be responsible for the following supports:
The objective of Person-Centered Planning is to balance “important to” and “important for,” and to ensure the appropriate information is included in a Person-Centered Plan when addressing health, welfare and known or likely risk. The Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities (DODD) has adopted the following person-centered principles.
These principles apply to all areas of planning and service delivery. By following these guiding principles, Service and Support Administrators will assess and address health, welfare, and risk from the perspective of the person, their family, friends and community, and ensure that supports are in place to increase community membership and quality of life without compromising health and safety.
To determine if a person is eligible for services, contact HCBDD at (419) 668-8840.
A thorough knowledge about the person receiving services – their unique history and experiences, their likes and dislikes, their risks and concerns, their interests and culture, and their strengths, talents and goals – is essential to planning supports.
Increasing opportunities for decision-making in small everyday matters and life-defining matters encourages self-expression, self-determination, advocacy, and independence.
Involving trusted supports such as close friends in service and support planning brings additional perspectives from those who know the person best. These supports promote physical and emotional well-being and can offer encouragement as an individual works toward their goals.
Expanding involvement in meaningful community activities and employment opportunities enhances a person’s network of personal relationships, or natural supports. Part of everyday life, and everyone’s experience, these are individuals who see one another regularly, and look out for and help each other – such as coworkers, fellow volunteers, and members of your church.
Developing a plan starts with the person receiving services – what is important to them and for them – and involves others chosen by that individual to aid in informed decision-making. The plan is coordinated by the individual’s Service and Support Administrator (SSA). For adults, the individual receiving services functions as the leader of the team; for children, the parent functions as the leader of the team and transitions that role to their child during the teen years, if not before.
Aging out of Early Intervention (EI) programming and into Service and Support Administration can be an emotional and confusing transition.
The Eligibility and Intake Coordinator will meet with families and the EI worker to ensure smooth transition for eligible children. Once a child is determined eligible for Board services, our SSA meets with you and your child to assess needs and build a plan that will support your family.
The SSA will be responsible for the following supports:
To determine if a child is eligible for services, contact HCBDD at (419) 668-8840.
The Transition Service and Support Administrator (SSA) assists people in finding the training and resources to ensure a smooth and successful transition from school to work.
Rather than wait until a student reaches their senior year in high school before looking at possible careers, Transition SSAs work with students and their Teams to start that discussion as young as age 14 and up to adulthood. Transition SSAs refer and monitor referrals to Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities (OOD) and services through OOD vendors and the student’s school.
The Transition SSA will be responsible for the following supports:
To determine if a child is eligible for services, contact HCBDD at (419) 668-8840.
SSAs are the primary point of coordination for people served by HCBDD. SSAs use a person-centered approach to help people live their best lives and focus on what matters the most to them.
Adults with developmental disabilities receive support in several areas that allow them to live the lives they choose.
The Adult SSA will be responsible for the following supports:
The Huron County Board of DD, in partnership with Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities, coordinates employment services. These services may include vocational habilitation, individual or group employment support and career planning and discovery. These services are provided by community partners and funded through the County Board and Medicaid. Competitive community employment is always the desired outcome of employment services. SSAs serve as employment navigators assisting individuals to navigate their place on the path to employment.
To determine if a person is eligible for services, contact HCBDD at (419) 668-8840.
The earlier we can touch the life of a child with a developmental disability, the greater the...
LEARN MOREProviding individuals the training and resources needed to ensure a smooth, successful transition from school to work.
LEARN MOREThe Board is committed to providing funding for services that will help individuals or families to maintain...
LEARN MOREWe customize our programs to the wants and needs of the individuals we serve.
LEARN MOREWe firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to