Rachel Kaplan's Consulting Philosophy & Methods

Top TLDR:

Rachel Kaplan's consulting philosophy & methods center on the kintsugi approach—repairing organizational gaps in disability inclusion with customized, accessible solutions rooted in lived experience. Rather than one-size-fits-all compliance training, her Greenville, South Carolina-based practice offers individualized assessments, intersectional awareness training, and practical adaptations that transform organizational culture. Organizations should start with an honest assessment of current accessibility gaps before implementing systemic change.

Understanding Rachel Kaplan's Approach to Disability Inclusion

When Rachel Kaplan founded Kintsugi Consulting, LLC in 2020, she brought more than professional credentials to the table. She brought fifteen years of lived experience navigating the world as someone with invisible disabilities, combined with a Master's in Public Health and deep expertise in disability advocacy. This unique blend of personal insight and professional knowledge shapes every aspect of her consulting services and training philosophy.

Rachel's approach isn't about applying generic templates or checking boxes. It's about recognizing that people with disabilities aren't broken—but the systems designed to serve them often are. Her work centers on mending those organizational gaps with practical, accessible solutions that actually work for the communities they're meant to serve.

The Kintsugi Philosophy: Finding Beauty in Imperfection

The name Kintsugi carries profound meaning that extends far beyond aesthetics. In Japanese tradition, kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer, making the item functional again while highlighting rather than hiding its history. The breaks become part of the object's story, celebrated rather than concealed.

Rachel chose this name deliberately. Organizations and communities have cracks—places where disability inclusion falls short, where accessibility isn't prioritized, where people get left out. Rather than viewing these gaps as failures to be hidden, Rachel sees them as opportunities for transformation. She becomes the gold that mends those cracks, helping organizations grow stronger and more inclusive through honest acknowledgment of where they've fallen short.

This philosophy challenges the common narrative that people with disabilities need to be "fixed" or that their needs are burdens. Instead, it reframes the conversation: diversity and inclusion are what make organizations stronger. The disability community doesn't need to change to fit existing systems. The systems need to evolve to genuinely include everyone.

Core Principles That Guide the Work

Centering Lived Experience

Rachel's own journey with type 1 diabetes began at age 3. She's spent her entire life navigating 504 Plans, workplace accommodations, and explaining invisible disability needs to people who don't understand them. Later diagnosed with generalized anxiety, she learned to advocate through mental health stigma as well. These aren't abstract concepts for her—they're daily realities.

This lived experience informs everything. When Rachel designs training programs or provides consultation, she draws from decades of knowing what actually helps versus what sounds good on paper but fails in practice. She understands the frustration of being reduced to a diagnosis rather than seen as a whole person. She knows the isolation of being "the only one" in a space not designed with you in mind.

But Rachel's approach extends beyond her own experience. Through her work at a Center for Independent Living and collaboration with diverse disability communities, she's learned that her experiences with diabetes and anxiety don't represent all disabilities. Every disability is unique. What works for one person may not work for another. This understanding is fundamental to her person-centered methodology.

Rejecting One-Size-Fits-All Solutions

The most common mistake organizations make when approaching disability inclusion is assuming a universal solution exists. Create one ramp, add one accommodation, deliver one training session, and call it done. Rachel's philosophy directly challenges this thinking.

Disabilities are inherently individual. Two people with the same diagnosis may need completely different supports. Someone with diabetes might need frequent breaks to manage blood sugar one day and no accommodations the next, depending on their levels. A person with anxiety might benefit from written instructions in one situation and verbal communication in another. These needs shift based on context, environment, and countless other factors.

Rachel's consultation services are built on this reality. She doesn't arrive with pre-packaged solutions. She listens to the specific community an organization serves, examines existing programs and policies, identifies actual gaps rather than assumed ones, and creates customized strategies that address real needs. The work is collaborative, flexible, and tailored to each organization's unique circumstances and goals.

Honoring Intersectionality

Disability doesn't exist in isolation. Rachel is a big advocate for acknowledging the intersectionality of different minority populations. A person with a disability might also be BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, economically disadvantaged, or part of multiple marginalized communities. These identities interact in complex ways that shape experiences and needs.

Understanding this intersectionality is essential to authentic inclusion work. Historical oppression, systemic barriers, and current discrimination compound when someone exists at multiple intersections. Rachel's approach considers these layered realities rather than treating disability as a single-axis issue.

She emphasizes that to truly understand someone, you must understand the barriers they and others before them have faced. Present-day challenges don't exist in a vacuum—they're connected to histories of exclusion, medical abuse, institutionalization, and ongoing marginalization. Effective inclusion work requires grappling with this context honestly.

Person-First vs. Identity-First Language: Respecting Individual Choice

Language matters in disability advocacy, and Rachel's approach reflects the complexity of this conversation. The disability community itself is divided on whether to use person-first language ("person with a disability") or identity-first language ("disabled person"). Some people feel person-first language emphasizes their humanity rather than reducing them to a diagnosis. Others embrace identity-first language because disability is integral to who they are—not something separate from their identity.

Rachel educates organizations about both approaches and, crucially, teaches them to respect individual preferences. The goal isn't to mandate one "correct" way of speaking but to listen to how people describe themselves and honor those choices. This flexibility extends to all aspects of her work: meeting people where they are, respecting their autonomy, and recognizing that they are the experts on their own experiences.

Rachel Kaplan's Consulting Methods in Practice

Comprehensive Accessibility Assessments

Before recommending solutions, Rachel conducts thorough assessments of existing programs, events, services, and materials. This isn't a superficial checklist exercise. She examines PowerPoint presentations for screen reader compatibility, reviews policies for ableist language or exclusionary practices, evaluates event spaces for physical and sensory accessibility, tests digital content for compliance with accessibility standards, and identifies gaps where certain disability types are overlooked entirely.

The assessment process reveals patterns that organizations often miss. For example, an organization might have physically accessible facilities but completely inaccessible digital materials. Or their programs might accommodate physical disabilities while ignoring neurodivergent participants' sensory needs. Rachel identifies these blind spots systematically, examining how different disability types experience services differently and where accommodations for one group inadvertently create barriers for another.

Concrete assessment activities include conducting accessibility audits of websites and social media content, reviewing event planning documents for accommodation considerations, testing whether documents are compatible with screen readers and other assistive technology, evaluating whether language in materials reflects current disability justice frameworks, and identifying whether visual materials include adequate image descriptions.

These assessments reveal not just what's missing but why it's missing. Often, accessibility failures stem from lack of awareness rather than malicious intent. Organizations simply don't know what they don't know. Rachel's role is to illuminate these blind spots with compassion while providing concrete pathways forward. She doesn't shame organizations for past oversights—she partners with them to build better systems moving forward.

Customized Training and Education

Rachel offers an extensive range of training topics, but she never delivers the exact same training twice. Each session is tailored to the specific audience, organizational culture, and learning objectives. Training topics can include making social media inclusive and accessible, interactive disability rights education, incorporating youth-friendly disability services, understanding accessibility in programming, embedding cross-disability awareness, person-first vs. identity-first language discussions, teaching advocacy and goal-setting skills, consent and supported decision-making, normalizing sexuality and disability, and addressing representation in media and its impact.

Her training style is interactive and grounded in real-world examples. She uses her own experiences to make concepts tangible while being careful not to center her story over the diverse experiences of the disability community at large. Participants leave with practical tools they can implement immediately, not just theoretical knowledge.

Rachel also provides short educational videos on topics like implicit bias, the definition of disability, inspiration porn versus true inclusion, and intention versus impact. These resources can stand alone or supplement larger training initiatives.

Hands-On Consultation and Adaptation Services

Beyond education, Rachel provides direct support in making materials and programs accessible. This practical work includes enhancing PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and PDFs with closed captioning and screen reader-friendly features, adapting curricula and educational materials for learners with various disabilities, creating or modifying events and programs to be fully accessible, revising policy and procedure documents to remove ableist language and add inclusive practices, adapting health and wellness programming for all disability types, and designing youth programming that centers disability inclusion from the start.

Through collaborations and partnerships with organizations like SafeBAE, Elevatus Training, and the Brain Injury Association of South Carolina, Rachel has demonstrated how effective disability inclusion strengthens organizations' overall mission and reach.

One particularly impactful example is her work on the SCOUT IT Method Technical Package—a comprehensive guide for making curriculum and content accessible to people with disabilities. This resource embodies her philosophy of providing practical, replicable tools that organizations can use independently even after consultation ends.

Youth-Centered Advocacy Training

A distinctive aspect of Rachel's work is her focus on empowering young people with disabilities. Having coordinated a summer camp program for children with type 1 diabetes for ten years, she understands the importance of building self-advocacy skills early. That experience revealed a critical gap in most educational and health programming: young people with disabilities often receive services but rarely learn to advocate for themselves effectively.

Rachel's youth programs teach communication skills, self-advocacy and goal-setting, understanding and requesting accommodations, consent and bodily autonomy, navigating healthcare and educational systems, and building pride in disability identity. But her approach goes deeper than skill-building alone. She creates environments where young people feel safe to explore their identity, ask questions they might not voice elsewhere, practice difficult conversations before having them in real-world settings, connect with peers who share similar experiences, and develop confidence that extends beyond disability advocacy.

The feedback speaks for itself. As one partner from My Brother's Keeper Spartanburg noted, youth referenced her session as their favorite and most memorable moment from camp. This resonance happens because Rachel meets young people where they are, using age-appropriate language and interactive activities that engage rather than lecture.

Young people with disabilities face unique challenges around isolation, self-esteem, and feeling like "the only one." Many grow up in environments where their disability is either over-emphasized (becoming their entire identity) or completely ignored (forcing them to suppress their needs). Rachel creates a third option: spaces where disability is acknowledged, accommodations are normalized, and young people learn they can be whole people whose disability is one part of a multifaceted identity.

This early intervention is crucial—the self-advocacy skills learned in youth carry forward into adulthood, employment, relationships, and every area of life. Adults who never developed these skills often struggle unnecessarily with requesting accommodations, setting boundaries, or recognizing when systems are failing them rather than assuming personal inadequacy. Rachel's youth work plants seeds that grow into lifelong empowerment.

Organizational Policy Development and Review

Policies and procedures often contain hidden ableism—language, requirements, or processes that inadvertently exclude people with disabilities. Rachel reviews existing organizational documents to identify these issues and works with leadership to create more inclusive alternatives.

This might involve revising attendance policies that don't account for disability-related absences, updating dress codes that don't accommodate assistive devices or medical needs, creating clear accommodation request processes, ensuring hiring practices screen for inclusion rather than perpetuating bias, or developing inclusive communication standards across the organization.

Policy work is foundational because it shapes organizational culture at the structural level. Individual accommodations matter, but systemic change requires examining and revising the rules that govern how an organization operates.

The Importance of Cultural Humility and Continuous Learning

Rachel's philosophy acknowledges that disability inclusion work is never "finished." Understanding evolves, language changes, new barriers are identified, and the community's needs shift over time. She approaches this work with cultural humility—recognizing that despite her expertise and lived experience, she doesn't know everything and must remain open to learning.

This humility is especially important given the diversity of the disability community. Physical disabilities, sensory disabilities, intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental health conditions, chronic illnesses, neurodivergence, and invisible disabilities all present different challenges and perspectives. No single consultant, including Rachel, can speak for all of these experiences. Authentic inclusion requires ongoing dialogue with community members and responsiveness to feedback.

Organizations working with Rachel learn to adopt this same posture of humility and continuous improvement. Disability inclusion isn't a box to check—it's an ongoing commitment to growth, adaptation, and centering the voices of people most impacted by exclusion.

Why Rachel's Approach Differs from Traditional Diversity Training

Many diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives mention disability almost as an afterthought—a line item on a list of identity categories to address. Rachel's work places disability at the center while maintaining attention to intersectionality.

Traditional DEI training often treats disability as a compliance issue. Make the workplace ADA-compliant, avoid discrimination, provide legally required accommodations, and move on. Rachel's approach goes far beyond compliance. She's interested in genuine inclusion, meaningful representation, authentic accessibility, culture change, and community engagement.

Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. An organization can meet every legal requirement and still create a culture where people with disabilities feel unwelcome, undervalued, or invisible. Rachel helps organizations reach beyond legal minimums toward cultures where disability is understood as a form of diversity that strengthens communities and where people with disabilities are present, heard, and valued in decision-making.

She also brings a refreshing directness to conversations that are often sanitized or overly cautious. Having navigated ableism personally, Rachel doesn't shy away from naming it when it appears. This honesty, delivered with empathy and practical guidance, helps organizations move from defensive positioning to genuine growth.

Common Organizational Challenges Rachel Addresses

Organizations approach Kintsugi Consulting with varied challenges, but certain themes emerge consistently. Understanding these common pain points helps contextualize why Rachel's methods prove effective where generic solutions fail.

Challenge: Moving Beyond Tokenism

Many organizations recognize the need for disability inclusion but struggle to move past surface-level representation. They might feature a person with a disability in marketing materials while their actual services remain inaccessible. Or they might hire someone with a disability without examining whether their workplace culture truly supports disabled employees.

Rachel helps organizations distinguish between performative inclusion and substantive change. This involves examining decision-making structures to ensure disabled voices are included, reviewing whether accommodations are offered proactively or only when requested, assessing whether disability is addressed only in designated "diversity" initiatives or woven throughout organizational culture, and evaluating whether inclusion efforts serve the organization's image or genuinely improve disabled people's experiences.

Challenge: Balancing Multiple Disability Types

Organizations often optimize for one disability type while inadvertently creating barriers for others. A venue might have excellent wheelchair accessibility but overwhelming sensory stimulation for autistic attendees. Digital materials might be perfectly accessible for blind users but difficult for people with cognitive disabilities to navigate.

Rachel's cross-disability approach prevents these tradeoffs. Her assessments identify how different disability types experience the same space or service differently. She helps organizations develop solutions that work across disabilities rather than solving for one group while ignoring others. This might involve creating quiet spaces at events for sensory breaks, offering information in multiple formats to accommodate different cognitive processing needs, ensuring physical accessibility doesn't rely solely on solutions that exclude other disabilities, or developing flexible participation options that accommodate fluctuating needs.

Challenge: Staff Resistance and Misconceptions

Even when leadership supports disability inclusion, front-line staff sometimes resist due to misconceptions. They might believe accommodations are expensive, that disability inclusion only benefits a small number of people, that making services accessible means "lowering standards," or that discussing disability is uncomfortable or inappropriate.

Rachel's trainings address these misconceptions directly, using data, personal stories, and practical examples to shift perspectives. She demonstrates how accessibility benefits everyone, not just people with disabilities. Closed captions help people in noisy environments. Clear signage assists anyone who's directionally challenged. Flexible deadlines support parents, students, and anyone managing competing demands. When staff understand universal design principles, resistance often transforms into enthusiasm.

Real-World Impact: Testimonials and Results

The effectiveness of Rachel's philosophy and methods shows up in the feedback from organizations and individuals she's worked with. Colleagues describe her as a fierce advocate with personal and professional experience to back her work, a knowledgeable and energetic community partner, and someone who shows up as a true ally to marginalized communities regardless of who's in the room.

One executive director specifically highlighted Rachel's authentic allyship to people of color and other marginalized individuals, noting that she works and connects at levels that center those most oppressed—not just when it's convenient or visible.

From an educational director: "Rachel is a staunch advocate for others. She has a passion for building others up and helping her community. This passion can be seen in her drive to build bridges and collaborate with others for the benefit of the individuals whom she serves."

These testimonials speak to something essential about Rachel's approach: it's not performative. The work continues whether or not anyone is watching. The commitment to disability inclusion, intersectionality, and authentic representation is consistent and unwavering.

Getting Started with Kintsugi Consulting

Organizations interested in working with Rachel can explore several entry points. Prepared trainings offer structured sessions on specific topics, customizable to organizational needs. Consultation services provide hands-on support for accessibility improvements, program development, and policy revision. Short educational videos and resources offer accessible introductions to disability inclusion concepts. Collaborative partnerships allow for long-term engagement and ongoing support.

Rachel is based in Greenville, South Carolina, but works with organizations nationally. She offers both virtual and in-person options, ensuring her services are accessible regardless of location or budget constraints. The duration and intensity of consultation services are negotiable and determined by each organization's unique needs and timelines.

Getting started begins with a conversation. Rachel emphasizes connection and relationship-building as the foundation for effective inclusion work. She wants to understand your organization's current reality, goals, challenges, and vision before proposing any specific interventions. This collaborative approach ensures that recommendations truly serve your community rather than imposing external ideas of what inclusion "should" look like.

Conclusion: Mending Organizations with Gold

Rachel Kaplan's consulting philosophy returns to that central kintsugi metaphor: broken things can be repaired in ways that make them more beautiful and valuable than before. Organizations don't need to pretend they've always been perfectly inclusive. They need to acknowledge where inclusion has been lacking and commit to doing better.

That's where the gold comes in—the practical expertise, lived experience, and passionate advocacy that Rachel brings to every consultation and training. She doesn't paper over cracks or offer superficial fixes. She helps organizations fundamentally transform how they approach disability, creating cultures where people with disabilities are welcomed, valued, and genuinely included.

The work isn't easy. Authentic inclusion requires examining assumptions, changing long-standing practices, listening to difficult feedback, and investing resources. But the results—stronger organizations, more diverse perspectives, better services for all community members, and cultures of genuine belonging—make that effort worthwhile.

As Rachel often emphasizes, diversity and inclusion are what make organizations stronger. The disability community doesn't need to change to fit existing systems. Those systems need to evolve to genuinely include everyone. That evolution is exactly what Kintsugi Consulting, LLC helps organizations achieve.

If your organization is ready to move beyond compliance toward authentic disability inclusion, Rachel Kaplan brings the philosophy, methods, and practical tools to guide that transformation. The cracks are simply opportunities to create something more beautiful—and more equitable—than what existed before.

Bottom TLDR:

Rachel Kaplan's consulting philosophy & methods transform disability inclusion by combining fifteen years of lived experience with comprehensive accessibility expertise. Her approach moves organizations beyond ADA compliance toward authentic inclusion through customized trainings, policy revision, and youth advocacy programs in Greenville and nationally. Contact Kintsugi Consulting to schedule an assessment and discover where your organization can strengthen disability inclusion practices.

Ready to start your inclusion journey? Contact Rachel Kaplan to discuss how Kintsugi Consulting, LLC can support your organization's disability inclusion goals.