Background & Qualifications

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Qualifications

The Institute for Human Centered Design (IHCD) is an international education and design non-profit organization committed to advancing the role of design in expanding opportunity and enhancing experience for people of all ages, abilities and cultures through excellence in design. IHCD was founded in Boston in 1978 as Adaptive Environments and changed its name on its 30th anniversary to have an identity more reflective of our wide-ranging work. Our headquarters remain in Boston though some staff work remotely in other parts of the country and we have a small office in Tokyo.

IHCD has been a major national provider of user-friendly educational materials and training on accessibility dating back to its founding. IHCD has remained deeply involved in the national and international infrastructure of laws, codes, standards and guidelines on accessibility. IHCD created the first national training package on the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as the popular Checklist for Existing Facilities and the Title II (Government Entities) Action Guide.   We have recently updated the ADA Checklist on Existing Facilities to incorporate 2010 ADA standards (www.ADAChecklist.org). A new Title II Action Guide and a completely new digital Title III Action Guide is part of this series.

IHCD meets its mission through an unusual mix of education, technical assistance and inter-disciplinary design services offered internationally. Each activity informs the others for a dynamic interplay of expertise, learning and exploration.

Originally with expertise focused on Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in the USA, IHCD has remained deeply involved in the evolving US infrastructure of laws, codes and guidelines on accessibility.  IHCD created many of the materials that comprise the ADA Information File that the Department of Justice distributed across the country and that make up the core of the federally approved materials disseminated nationally by the regional ADA Centers. 

 

Current IHCD projects with federal funding and focused on accessibility compliance include:

  • New England Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Center, funded by the U.S. Department of Education since 1996 with funding through 2016;
  • National Design and Construction Resource Center for the Fair Housing Act, funded by HUD since 2003 with funding through 2014;
  • National Endowment for the Arts project (2012-2013), jointly sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Science, to create a comprehensive and dynamic web resource on accessibility and universal design for public and private cultural administrators, that will become part of the NEA website;
  • National manual & training on access to domestic violence services for women with disabilities for Vera Justice Institute/U.S. Department of Justice ('05-’12).
  • National study on Inclusive Pedestrian Environments, Resources and Recommendations for Easter Seals Project ACTION (completed October 2006) See the complete product at www.humancentereddesign.org/pedestrian/index.html

 

IHCD builds from a solid base of rigorous expertise about accessibility requirements but embraces a larger vision of design as a transformative tool of social equity and enhanced experience for all.  Our commitment to universal design/human centered design includes:

  • IHCD was one of five organizations that collaborated in the development of the Principles of Universal Design in 1997 that are copyrighted to the Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University at Raleigh.
  • The National Endowment for the Arts funded IHCD in 2008 to create the first international web-based collection of universally designed case studies in ten categories of the built environment, a project in collaboration with the UN.  The initial site is in place with dozens of additional projects in development (www.UniversalDesignCaseStudies.org)
  • IHCD has been a lead organization in the international Universal Design movement, having hosted or co-hosted five international conferences as well as international student design competitions, awards programs, smaller regional meetings and publication of web and print materials.  IHCD collaborates and presents at international events, writes and publishes in global publications and collaborates on regional and national inclusive design projects.
  • IHCD began the Access to Design Professions project with support from the National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) in 1999 as a memorial project to Ron Mace, considered the ‘father’ of universal design in the US. This international initiative seeks to increase the number of people with disabilities who enter and thrive in the design professions. In addition to training, competitions and a mentor program, IHCD hosts 10 students with disabilities every summer to learn about careers in design.
  • IHCD tailors training on universal design for service industries including financial services, public agencies, healthcare facilities, hospitality industry, travel and tourism, libraries and domestic violence providers. These trainings are organized to present guidance and effective practices on the information, communication, physical, and social and policy environments central to impacting the contextual definition of disability.
  • IHCD has been involved with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs before, during and since the development of the Convention on the Human Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) and attended the development meetings and trained delegates and UN staff on universal design (2004-present).
  • IHCD leaders provide an average of twenty-five (25) lectures on universal design annually.  Audiences range from international and national events to local.  They include conference keynotes and workshops but also lectures for design students.  Every year there is a mix that includes professional development for designers, public health professionals, as well as events related to aging, sustainability, livable communities and urban planning.
  • IHCD has created a tradition of hosting an annual daylong Symposium on Socially Sustainable Design in November at Build Boston (now Architecture Boston Expo), the second largest AIA event in the nation.
  • IHCD publishes a book a year that contributes to the universal design literature.  The first was Universal Design, A Reconsideration of Barrier-Free by Dr.Yoshihiko Kawauchi originally published in 2002 in Japan. The second, published in the fall of 2010 was Classroom Design for Children with Autism by Dr. Rachna Khare, a professor of universal design in India and parent of a child with autism.  The third, published in the fall of 2011, was Directional Sense by Dr. Janet Carpman, one of the nation’s premier experts in wayfinding. The 2012 publication is by Hubert Froyen, a Belgian professor of architecture whose career has been focused on inclusive design.

A wide range of consulting and design projects over the years include ADA self-evaluations and transition plans, review of existing conditions for accessibility compliance and universal design, design review during the course of design development for new buildings, renovations, landscapes, transportation, urban realm and exhibits.  In 2008, IHCD established IHCD Studio to pursue a range of design opportunities in the built environment that would focus consulting and design services as a central learning and demonstration hub within the organization.  In the last couple of years, IHCD has also established a growing roster of consulting clients for the design of products, information and communication technology and services. Clients range widely from individuals to institutions, governments and private entities.  Projects vary from local to national to international.  IHCD is opening the IHCD User/Expert Lab in the summer of 2012 to evaluate products and technologies.

The IHCD team includes professionals across the design disciplines (architecture, interior design, industrial design, digital design), education, engineering and the humanities.  It reflects the organizational commitment to diversity of age, ability and culture. Staff range in age from 21 to 79 with approximately half the team comprised of people with disabilities.  Staff, interns and visiting fellows come from a mix of nations and provide cultural insights as well as multi-lingual capacity.  IHCD hosts a wide range of US and international interns every year, most of whom are design undergraduate and graduate students but also related disciplines of sociology, anthropology, occupational therapy.  They range from high school students with disabilities to post-doctoral candidates in allied fields. Due to the extensive national and international network of individual and organizational collaborators, IHCD has an unusually rich and flexible expertise and capacity well beyond its core staff and we tailor the team for each project.  For this benchmarking proposal to Singapore, we are delighted to be able to include our long-term colleagues, Dr. Richard Simmons, the former Chief Executive of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment in the United Kingdom.  

IHCD commonly uses the World Health Organization framework that defines disability as a contextual phenomenon. The WHO mainstreams functional limitation as a fact of life in the 21st century and describes disability as generated at the intersection of the person and their multiple environments: physical, information, communication, policy and social.