Unemployment rates for Australians who are visually impaired (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) are unacceptably high. Research conducted by Vision Australia in 2007 and 2012 reported that 58% and 63% of people of working age who want jobs, respectively, are unable to find employment (Vision Australia, 2007, 2012). These results indicate that the rate of unemployment is four times higher for people with visual impairments, compared to the general Australian population. Vision Australia is a national nonprofit agency that provides vision rehabilitation services for clients of all ages, and it is actively working towards reducing the unemployment rate among this population. One approach to reducing unemployment among people with visual impairments is to deliberately discuss future employment and independence with families of children who are visually impaired when those children are at an early age. Vision Australia's Children's Services offer family-centered support for children from birth through school leaving (usually at 18 years). By taking a proactive approach, Vision Australia hopes to ensure younger generations of people with visual impairments do not face the same bleak employment outcomes. The employment literature often lists the key skills that are essential for obtaining and maintaining employment, which are commonly referred to as employability skills (Wolffe, 2011). Examples include: organizational and planning skills, working in a team, interacting appropriately with others, and demonstrating a sense of responsibility. These skills will not suddenly emerge when required--they must be practiced and mastered over time. Without the incidental learning that comes through visual observation, children and teenagers will not automatically develop employability skills on a par with their sighted peers. Traditional vocational preparation programs do not reliably meet the specific needs of students who are visually impaired, since these programs are aimed at sighted school leavers who typically possess underlying prerequisite skills and knowledge for such a program. Students who are visually impaired require opportunities and experiences that specifically target the work-related areas they are at risk of missing due to their vision loss. Career education has long been recognized as a key area of learning for success at school, in the community, and in the workplace (Sapp & Hatlen, 2010). It refers to the stages of learning that all students move through from an early age, when they develop their knowledge about the world of work and the skills required to be ready to work and employable. Wolffe (2009) describes six stages of lifelong learning in education: awareness, exploration, preparation, placement, maintenance, and mentoring. Ideally, children and teenagers would develop career-related skills and knowledge in the first two stages before they reach the middle of their high school years. By this time, students need to have learned about the types of jobs that exist and developed positive work habits and skills such as punctuality, organization, and time management. For several years, Children's Services staff members at Vision Australia (including occupational therapists, counselors, physiotherapists, assistive technology trainers, and employment consultants) have conducted group programs aimed at providing education for students with visual impairments and their families. Several such programs were attended by teenagers (aged 15-18 years), and it was revealed that many of the attendees were still unprepared for the transition to life after high school due to significant gaps in their basic understandings of work, directly or indirectly attributable to their visual impairment. These identified gaps in knowledge highlighted the need for pretraining programs to help younger students with visual impairments develop those foundational concepts outlined in Wolffe's (2009) career awareness and exploration career-education stages. …