Consulting

IHCD brings its deep content expertise in accessibility and inclusive design to a wide range of public and private clients. We are distinguished by our commitment to educate, provide practical, user-friendly information, and build capacity within client organizations. We tailor the scope of work and deliverables for every project. 

"IHCD brings both passion and expertise to its work. IHCD plays a key role in helping RLMG think through our approach to accessibility by providing real-world guidance and more importantly helping us to understand why accessibility matters. The IHCD team of user-experts represent a broad range of abilities and their first-hand feedback has become an invaluable part of our development process."
Richard Lewis, Principal, Richard Lewis Media Group

Examples of IHCD Consulting:

Cultural Consulting

IHCD collaborates with museums, historic houses, aquariums, zoos, other cultural organizations, and exhibition design firms to increase accessibility and inclusion for all visitors, staff, and volunteers. We have decades of collective experience working with organizations large and small, old and new, and knowledgeable about inclusion or just dipping into that goal for the first time.  We believe that accessibility and inclusion help organizations reach the broadest group of visitors on the spectrum of abilities and age across all personal identities.  And we believe in going directly to visitors on that spectrum for input, advice, and direction.  

Whether an existing museum wants to assess its current accessibility or new museum wants to ensure fully inclusive design, clients appreciate our attention to detail (because accessibility is in the details) in evaluation, design charrettes, design review, brainstorming solutions, and providing resources about current research and technologies.  

IHCD’s mission is to build capacity in clients so that at the end of any project, our colleagues believe they now know more about inclusive design and are ready to maintain all that is accomplished and push the boundaries on future projects.  

See IHCD’s Cultural Materials from AAM 2023.

Existing Condition Reviews

IHCD analyzes compliance with accessibility responsibilities and opportunities for inclusive design. This includes but is not limited to ADA Self-Evaluation and Transition Plans.

  • Clients include municipalities, cultural entities, public transit systems, state and national parks, hospitality, residential, healthcare.
  • Process includes IHCD tailoring proprietary digital documentation tools for each client.
  • Deliverables include narrative summaries for each building and outdoor area, detailed illustrated catalogs, cost estimation, priorities for corrective action and analysis of policies and procedures that support program access.

Team working on MBTA Design Guide for Access

Web/Digital Review

Review of existing websites, apps, distance learning platforms as well as digital projects in development. Emerging technological developments provide the means to deliver extraordinary opportunities for equal and shared experiences for people with a range of functional limitations while working better for everyone.
IHCD can assist clients to understand relevant expectations for compliance with accessibility standards as well as best practice in inclusive digital design. Detailed reviews will include:

  • expert staff analysis
  • testing with standardized tools
  • direct testing with user/experts*

* A primary user/expert is a person who has developed expertise by means of their lived experience in dealing with the challenges of the environment due to a physical, sensory or brain-based functional limitation.  IHCD invites user/experts based upon the client’s audience.  User/experts will always include people with sight limitations and brain-based conditions like learning disabilities and neuro-diversity but may also include older users and/or people with limited English skills or people with significant physical limitations.

Harvard Medical School Cooper HewittWhitneyDCR MASmithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureGeorgia Tech University

Service Design

Public and private entities are paying substantial attention to increasing the quality and effectiveness of service design. IHCD believes that there are two keys to making service design better:

  • Recognize that services that work for people at the edges of the spectrum will work better for everyone.
  • The service experience is holistic and needs to be considered to include the physical, information, communication, attitudinal or social environments, and policy.

IHCD’s service design method involves a set of interlocking activities:

  1. Preliminary data-gathering with responsible parties at a mix of levels to listen to perceptions of what works and what doesn’t in their experience.
  2. A holistic analysis of the environment by IHCD’s multi-disciplinary team prior to the start of the participatory process.
  3. Contextual inquiry research and documentation with representative user/experts of the entire service process from preliminary planning through the physical, information, communication, policy, and attitudinal environment.
  4. Participatory engagement with the people responsible for the service that shares a distillation of all of the information gathered from the first three steps to generate a prioritized plan of action for more satisfying and effective user-centered services. 

Wayfinding

IHCD can work closely with your organization to improve your existing wayfinding system or plan wayfinding for a new or renovated facility.

We focus on inclusive wayfinding for diverse users of all ages (from children to seniors), abilities (including people with physical, sensory, and brain-based limitations), and roles (visitors, patients, customers, workers, residents, travelers, drivers, and the like). We plan for wayfinding ease of unfamiliar users, because if the wayfinding system works well for them, it works well for everyone.

The IHCD team provides a full range of wayfinding services, including:

  • Wayfinding Design Reviews: Close collaboration with client representatives and the design team to make sure new construction and renovation projects are easy to navigate by everyone. Deliverables: Design review reports. 
  • Wayfinding Analyses: Quick analysis of facilities, in-depth analyses of facilities and websites. Deliverables: Analysis reports with recommendations. 
  • Wayfinding Planning: Sign location planning, sign message planning, room numbering planning, wayfinding system masterplanning, recommendations for wayfinding-related improvements. Deliverables: sign location plans, sign message schedules, room numbering plans, wayfinding system masterplans with detailed recommendations. 
  • Wayfinding Design and Implementation: Wayfinding sign design, bidding assistance, oversight of sign design and fabrication, map design, analysis of wayfinding technology options, wayfinding operational program development, wayfinding system evaluation. Deliverables: sign design documentation; bid documents; sign design drawings; reports on design and fabrication oversight; map design: handheld maps, You-Are-Here maps, emergency egress maps; meeting notes; program development documentation, evaluation reports.

We work with all site- and facility types, including: cultural, educational, government, healthcare, hospitality, workplace.