Inclusive Experience Design

We work with your staff, design agency, architects, trades, media producers, content creators, digital teams, artists, fabricators, installers, A/V integrators, and more to develop experiences, exhibitions, events, public programs, educational programming, shows, themed rides and experiences, food and beverage services, and more so that your experiences welcome the widest possible audience. As you engage your audience, be mindful that there is no greater barrier to engagement than inaccessibility. We help you ensure your audience spends more of their cognitive and physical energy on your content and experience, instead of trying to access your content and experience.

Design Evaluations

Our approach is to understand your design intent, and help deliver that intent to the widest possible audience, always maintaining an aesthetically stunning product that embodies your brand identity. Collaborating with PAC from the beginning of the design process not only mitigates future costs, you also avoid making a trade-off between inclusion and great design.

We participate in every aspect of design across digital interfaces and the built environment. When collaborating on digital interfaces, we evaluate and suggest opportunities across websites, apps, digital interactives, mixed reality, and any other form of technology-mediated user experience. When collaborating on the built environment, we evaluate and suggest opportunities across environmental design and wayfinding, graphic design, traditional media, mixed reality, and all forms of embodied experience.

Web Accessibility

We conduct accessibility overviews, spot checks, and formal WCAG audits at levels AA and AAA. Quite often, organizations are incorrectly advised that they need a WCAG audit. We do not lead with audits, instead choosing to provide accessibility overviews and spot checks at first to construct accessibility knowledge and experience so that the benefits of a comprehensive audit can be fully realized.

Our analyses center around providing solutions, not just enumerating problems. Our engineers utilize access technologies such as screen readers, screen magnification, and voice recognition software. In addition, we use automated test tools and manual inspection of generated markup. Our decades of expertise, specifically with respect to accessibility and its intersection with website design and development, are instrumental for a comprehensive approach.

Mobile Applications

We provide accessibility overviews, spot checks, and audits to support inclusive mobile design and implementation for Android, iOS, and mobile-web applications. We work closely with your designers and developers to provide extensive training and practice of accessible coding standards. We walk through the application and discuss implementation-level details so that your team gains a clear understanding of how they can create inclusive and enjoyable mobile experiences.

We also ensure that accessibility best practices are implemented and that the offerings your team builds are compatible with industry-standard access technologies such as mobile screen readers, zoom/magnification, high contrast modes, voice control, and much more. Though no formal process exists for auditing mobile applications, PAC uses guidelines expressed by both the second version of the BBC's mobile access guidelines as well as those success criteria we feel apply from the WCAG to provide detailed recommendations to make an inclusive mobile experience.

Media Access Affordances

As part of either digital or built-environment workstreams, we also help with the production of audio description, visual description, guided tactile description, transcripts, captions, and sign language. Depending on the specifics of the project, we may either produce these affordances internally or help you coordinate across various service providers; thereby, simplifying your ability to communicate with the widest possible audience.

Capacity Building

We work with your team to ensure your organization can spend resources in a way that not only delivers on your strategic objectives, but holistically increases inclusive access across the enterprise.

We teach you the questions to ask and explore the answers with you. We train developers, content creators, designers, management, and other personnel on how to produce an inclusive offering. We conduct workshops and trainings in visual description, web accessibility, mobile application development, and more. We are happy to collaborate with you on customized workshops and trainings to achieve your specific goals.

One particularly comprehensive capacity-building package is the 14 module "A Practice of Inclusion" program. It is comprised of lectures and activities that help orient all staff, work units, and departments across your organization towards thinking within an inclusive design framework at both macro and micro levels. This program is often paired with other institutional work; such as, Strategy and Policy work, roadmapping, community engagement, and more.

Legal

ADA-related lawsuits have been on the rise and you may need help understanding the scope of expectations and requirements to be compliant with the evolving laws supporting accessibility. We provide consultation to businesses, nonprofits, and law firms on the technical requirements for accessibility. We operate in a range of legal contexts, serving as consultants and as expert witnesses, and writing amicus curiae briefs in support of cases advancing accessibility and inclusion.

Strategy and Policy

We work in concert with boards of trustees, senior staff, content creators, project managers, developers, and decision-makers to craft strategy that incentivizes inclusive design. We help our partners draft policy that supports institutional commitment to digital, web, and overall accessibility standards. In order to help organizations achieve a sustainable approach, we work with our partners on roadmaps that layout detailed implementation plans.

Lectures and Keynotes

PAC loves to inform and inspire while motivating actions towards a more inclusive world. We deliver keynotes and lectures on a variety of topics within the cultural, themed entertainment, and technology sectors. Whether we are presenting on our latest work or motivating audiences to think inclusively, we are grateful to engage with audiences to motivate them to think and create inclusively.

Research

We partner with academic and corporate research labs to use evidence-based methodologies for integrating and enhancing usability principles across a variety of domains. Research and development by PAC has involved partnerships funded by a number of research grants, including but not limited to support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS), Department of Education (DOE), Federal Highway Administration (FHA), and the Department of Defense (DOD).