Integration of Systematic and Person-Centered Approaches in Disability Consulting
Top TLDR
The integration of systematic and person-centered approaches in disability consulting combines structured assessment frameworks like the SCOUT IT Method with deeply individualized, human-centered understanding of unique needs. Rachel Kaplan's methodology recognizes that effective disability inclusion requires both evidence-based organizational systems and authentic acknowledgment that no two people with disabilities have identical experiences. Organizations achieve lasting change when systematic processes honor individual dignity and lived experience.
Having diabetes and anxiety has taught me so much about the individuality of disabilities. Being part of a team of other adults with diabetes in a camp environment made it very clear that what works for one person may not work for another. There is no template that can be utilized for every single person—overarching "blanket statement" stereotypes can result in the dehumanizing process of seeing a person based on a one-dimensional label.
Yet I've also learned that lasting organizational change requires systematic approaches. When I work with organizations on disability inclusion, I don't just rely on good intentions and individual accommodations. I bring structured frameworks, evidence-based methods, and replicable processes that create sustainable change.
The most effective disability consulting integrates both dimensions: the systematic rigor needed to transform organizational systems and the person-centered wisdom needed to honor human complexity. This is the foundation of my practice.
Why Integration Matters in Disability Inclusion
Many organizations approach disability inclusion from one of two insufficient angles. Some focus exclusively on compliance checklists and standardized procedures—implementing accommodations by policy without understanding the people those policies affect. Others rely entirely on individual goodwill and case-by-case problem-solving without building systemic capacity for inclusion.
Neither approach alone creates the transformative change organizations need. Systematic frameworks without person-centered understanding produce rigid, dehumanizing compliance. Person-centered approaches without systematic implementation create inconsistent, unsustainable inclusion that depends on specific individuals rather than organizational culture.
I believe that organizations and communities have the opportunity to do more, do better, and make significant strides in ensuring that individuals with disabilities are represented and supported in a way that provides accessible accommodations to all. This requires integrating systematic change processes with authentic understanding of disabled people's lived experiences.
The Systematic Framework: Evidence-Based Assessment and Change
My consulting practice employs structured methodologies that give organizations clear frameworks for assessing and improving accessibility. These systematic approaches provide the scaffolding needed for sustainable organizational change.
The SCOUT IT Method
The SCOUT IT Method exemplifies this systematic dimension of my work. Created specifically to assess curriculum content and determine how to make it accessible to people with various disability types, SCOUT IT provides a replicable process for evaluation and adaptation.
This method emerged from years of experience in disability adaptations, health education, and effective programming. Rather than reinventing the wheel with each new project, organizations can apply the SCOUT IT framework systematically across different contexts and content areas.
The value of such frameworks lies in their ability to:
Create consistency across organizational programs and services so accessibility doesn't depend on which staff member someone interacts with.
Build organizational capacity by giving teams concrete tools they can apply independently rather than relying on external consultants indefinitely.
Ensure comprehensiveness by providing structured assessment that doesn't miss important accessibility dimensions.
Facilitate scalability by offering repeatable processes that work across different departments, programs, and initiatives.
Support evidence-based adaptation by grounding changes in proven methods rather than guesswork.
This systematic approach reflects my Master's in Public Health training and fifteen years of experience in disability adaptations, health education, and effective programming. Organizations need structured frameworks to move beyond ad hoc responses toward genuine systemic change.
Organizational Systems Change
Beyond specific assessment methods, my consulting services address organizational systems holistically. This includes:
Enhancing digital accessibility features across PowerPoint presentations, documents, PDFs, and videos to incorporate closed captioning and screen reader-friendly elements
Creating or adapting events and programs to be fully accessible, youth-friendly, and disability-friendly
Embedding cross-disability awareness and inclusion in existing services and programs
Training teams on making social media inclusive and accessible
Adapting health and wellness programming to be inclusive of all disability types
These services reflect systematic thinking—examining how organizational systems either include or exclude, then methodically addressing barriers at structural levels. Rather than solving individual access problems as they arise, we build organizational capacity to prevent exclusion proactively.
The Person-Centered Foundation: Honoring Individual Experience
While systematic frameworks provide essential structure, they must be grounded in authentic understanding of disabled people's humanity, diversity, and lived experience. This is where person-centered principles become critical.
Recognizing Disability Individuality
Diabetes, like all disabilities, needs to be approached in an individualized manner where the person who has the disability is acknowledged and respected. This is the same with anxiety. The coping skills and medication combinations are different for everyone—not everyone needs medication, nor does everyone need or benefit from therapy and different coping skills.
This understanding of disability individuality fundamentally shapes how I apply systematic frameworks. The SCOUT IT Method doesn't prescribe identical adaptations for all disabilities. Rather, it provides a systematic process for considering diverse disability types and individual needs within each category.
When working with organizations, I emphasize that:
People with disabilities are not broken—the services provided often leave them out and can make them feel excluded. Our work fixes systems, not people.
Disability is not one-dimensional—each person experiences disability uniquely based on disability type, severity, intersecting identities, personal history, and individual preferences.
Accommodations must be individualized—what works for one person with a particular disability may not work for another person with the same diagnosis.
Lived experience matters—people with disabilities are experts on their own needs and must be centered in decisions affecting them.
Dignity is non-negotiable—every adaptation, policy, and practice must honor disabled people's full humanity and agency.
These person-centered principles prevent systematic frameworks from becoming dehumanizing compliance exercises. They ensure that structured processes serve genuine inclusion rather than performative accessibility.
Drawing on Lived Experience
I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age three, so requesting and advocating for things I needed to be successful and healthy has been at the forefront of many of my experiences. As someone with an invisible disability, I had to learn to navigate accommodations in school with a 504 Plan, and then translate those necessary accommodations into employment positions.
This lived experience informs every aspect of my consulting practice. I understand viscerally what it means to constantly advocate for your needs, to explain invisible disability to skeptical people, to balance disclosure decisions, and to navigate systems not designed with you in mind.
When I bring systematic frameworks to organizations, I do so with intimate knowledge of how policies and procedures feel from the receiving end. I know the difference between accommodations that truly enable participation and those that technically comply while maintaining barriers. I understand the emotional labor of repeatedly explaining your needs and the exhaustion of fighting for basic access.
This combination—systematic expertise grounded in lived experience—enables me to guide organizations toward approaches that are both structurally sound and authentically inclusive.
Practical Integration: How It Works in Practice
Integrating systematic and person-centered approaches requires intentionality throughout the consulting process. Here's how this integration manifests in my work with organizations.
Initial Assessment: Structure Meets Story
When beginning work with an organization, I employ systematic assessment tools to evaluate current accessibility and inclusion practices. This provides objective data about gaps, barriers, and opportunities.
Simultaneously, I create space for listening to stories—from disabled employees, disabled community members, and people experiencing organizational barriers. These narratives reveal nuances that structured assessment alone might miss and provide crucial context for understanding priority areas.
The systematic assessment answers: What are the technical gaps in accessibility?
The person-centered listening answers: How do these gaps affect real people's ability to participate, contribute, and thrive?
Together, these approaches create comprehensive understanding that informs meaningful change.
Training Development: Framework Plus Flexibility
My training services integrate systematic content delivery with person-centered facilitation. Trainings can be created and tailored for your needs, encompassing topics that include implicit bias, person-first versus identity-first language, representation in media, and making social media accessible.
Each training provides:
Systematic framework—structured content, evidence-based practices, clear learning objectives, and actionable takeaways that participants can apply.
Person-centered engagement—space for questions, acknowledgment of diverse perspectives, connection to participants' real experiences, and recognition that learning is ongoing.
This integration means trainings don't just deliver information—they create understanding. Participants gain both concrete tools and genuine insight into disability experiences.
Program Adaptation: Process and Participation
When adapting existing programs for accessibility, I apply systematic assessment methods like SCOUT IT while prioritizing participation from people with disabilities throughout the process.
The systematic dimension ensures comprehensive evaluation—we methodically examine every program component for potential barriers and identify specific adaptations needed.
The person-centered dimension ensures relevant adaptation—we involve disabled community members in design decisions, test adaptations with actual users, and remain flexible when standardized solutions don't work for specific individuals.
Throughout my collaborations and partnerships, this integrated approach has enabled successful adaptation of sexual health education curriculum, youth programming, professional development initiatives, and community services.
Understanding Intersectionality Through Both Lenses
I am a big advocate in acknowledging the intersectionality of different minority populations and believe that until we understand the impact that history has made on different minority groups, there is not an authentic way to address the issues occurring presently.
Both systematic and person-centered approaches are essential for addressing intersectionality effectively.
Systematic Attention to Intersectionality
Systematic frameworks must actively incorporate intersectional analysis. This means:
Assessment tools that examine how disability intersects with race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, and other identities
Data collection that captures intersectional experiences rather than treating disability as isolated category
Policies that address compounded marginalization rather than assuming disabled people are monolithic group
Training that explicitly addresses intersection of disability with other forms of oppression
Without systematic attention, intersectionality remains abstract acknowledgment rather than concrete organizational practice.
Person-Centered Understanding of Intersectionality
Simultaneously, person-centered approaches honor the lived reality of holding multiple marginalized identities.
To understand someone, it is essential to understand the barriers they and others before them have faced and how that may impact decisions and beliefs today. This requires listening to specific experiences of disabled people of color, disabled LGBTQ+ individuals, disabled immigrants, and others navigating multiple marginalization.
Person-centered understanding recognizes that a Black disabled woman's experience differs fundamentally from a white disabled woman's experience, which differs from a disabled man's experience. Systematic frameworks alone can miss these crucial distinctions.
The Kintsugi Philosophy: Integrated Healing
The name Kintsugi has significant meaning for me. Kintsugi is the Japanese tradition and art of mending broken pottery. The cracks created when something is broken are filled with gold or silver so that the item can still be used moving forward. This art form encourages growth, acceptance of flaws, and the opportunity to see the beauty in diversity.
This philosophy embodies the integration of systematic and person-centered approaches. Kintsugi requires both technical skill—knowing how to properly repair pottery with structural integrity—and artistic sensibility—seeing beauty in imperfection and honoring each piece's unique character.
Similarly, effective disability consulting requires both systematic expertise and person-centered wisdom. Let me be the gold that mends the cracks of your organization to create one that can grow from mistakes or missed opportunities while enriching the culture and services being provided to include those within the disability community.
The systematic approach provides the technical skill—the frameworks, methods, and processes that create structural change. The person-centered approach provides the artistic sensibility—the wisdom to honor uniqueness, center humanity, and recognize that organizational "flaws" become sources of strength when addressed authentically.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls Through Integration
Many organizations struggle with disability inclusion because they lean too heavily toward one approach at the expense of the other. Understanding these pitfalls helps organizations maintain appropriate balance.
Pitfall One: All Process, No People
Organizations that focus exclusively on systematic compliance without person-centered understanding create technically accessible environments that still feel exclusionary. They implement policies without understanding impact, provide accommodations without dignity, and check boxes without creating belonging.
This approach typically manifests as:
Rigid application of standardized accommodations regardless of individual needs
Decisions made about disabled people without involving disabled people
Focus on legal minimum requirements rather than genuine accessibility
Treating disability as checklist item rather than human experience
Integration prevents this by grounding systematic processes in authentic understanding of disabled people's experiences and priorities.
Pitfall Two: All Heart, No Structure
Conversely, organizations that rely entirely on individual goodwill and case-by-case problem-solving without building systematic capacity create inconsistent inclusion. Accessibility depends on which manager you get, which department you work in, or whether specific advocates are present.
This approach typically manifests as:
Accommodations that work well for specific individuals but aren't replicable
Inclusion that relies on particular staff members' commitment rather than organizational culture
Inability to scale accessibility practices across growing organizations
Constant reinvention rather than building on established frameworks
Integration prevents this by providing replicable frameworks that create consistency while remaining flexible enough to honor individual needs.
Finding the Balance
The integration of systematic and person-centered approaches navigates between these pitfalls. Organizations develop structured capacity for inclusion while maintaining flexibility and humanity. They build replicable processes while honoring disability diversity. They create consistency while remaining responsive to individual experience.
This balanced approach reflects how I've learned to navigate my own disabilities—using systematic self-management tools for diabetes while remaining attuned to my body's unique signals, applying structured coping strategies for anxiety while recognizing my individual triggers and needs.
Building Your Organization's Integrated Approach
Organizations ready to develop this integrated approach can take several concrete steps.
Assess Both Systemically and Personally
Begin with comprehensive assessment that examines both structural barriers and individual experiences. Review policies, physical spaces, digital platforms, and communication practices through systematic accessibility lens. Simultaneously, create opportunities to hear from disabled employees, customers, clients, or community members about their actual experiences.
Don't assume you understand disabled people's needs—ask, listen, and believe what you hear.
Develop Structured Frameworks Grounded in Lived Experience
Invest in building organizational frameworks for ongoing inclusion rather than treating each accommodation as isolated incident. Consider implementing structured assessment methods, standardized accessibility review processes, and clear pathways for requesting and implementing accommodations.
Ensure these frameworks are developed with significant input from people with disabilities. Systematic processes should reflect disabled people's priorities, not just organizational convenience.
Train Teams in Both Dimensions
Provide training that builds both technical knowledge and human understanding. Teams need to learn specific accessibility practices, compliance requirements, and technical skills for creating accessible documents, spaces, and programs.
They also need opportunities to develop empathy, examine bias, understand disability history and culture, and connect with disabled people's humanity. Neither dimension alone creates competent, committed inclusion.
Partner With Integrated Consultants
Work with consultants who bring both systematic expertise and person-centered understanding. Throughout other employment opportunities I have had, my focus and passion always falls back to: "How can we make these services inclusive?" and "What are the opportunities to adapt content to be accessible to people with all types of disability?"
My consulting practice integrates fifteen years of experience in disability adaptations with lived experience navigating disability since childhood. This combination enables me to provide both structured frameworks and authentic understanding.
Create Feedback Loops
Build systematic processes for gathering ongoing feedback from disabled community members about whether inclusion efforts are actually working. Don't assume that implementing accommodations means they're effective—ask people about their experiences and be willing to adjust.
Create multiple pathways for feedback to accommodate different communication preferences and ensure that providing feedback doesn't require additional labor from disabled people who are already navigating barriers.
Moving Forward: Your Next Steps
Organizations at any stage of their inclusion journey can benefit from integrating systematic and person-centered approaches. Whether you're just beginning to address accessibility or looking to strengthen existing initiatives, this balanced methodology provides foundation for meaningful change.
Contact me to discuss how integrated disability consulting can strengthen your organization. Together we can assess your current practices, identify priority areas for growth, develop systematic frameworks tailored to your needs, and ensure your inclusion work centers disabled people's lived experiences and priorities.
Schedule a consultation to explore how this approach might work in your specific context. Every organization has unique needs, constraints, and opportunities. My role is to help you find the right balance of systematic structure and person-centered flexibility for your situation.
Diversity and inclusion are what makes an organization stronger. By integrating evidence-based frameworks with authentic understanding of disabled people's experiences, your organization can create accessibility that is both sustainable and genuinely welcoming—inclusion that transforms organizational culture while honoring individual dignity.
People with disabilities are not flawed or broken, but the services which are provided often leave them out and can make them feel excluded. Let's work together to fill those gaps with gold—creating organizational systems that are stronger, more beautiful, and more effective because they embrace the full diversity of human experience.
Bottom TLDR
The integration of systematic and person-centered approaches in disability consulting combines structured assessment frameworks with individualized understanding of diverse disability experiences to create sustainable organizational change. Rachel Kaplan's methodology applies evidence-based tools like the SCOUT IT Method while honoring the principle that no two disabled people have identical needs, ensuring inclusion efforts are both replicable and authentically human-centered. Organizations achieve lasting accessibility by partnering with consultants who bring both technical expertise and lived experience to transform systems while centering disabled people's dignity and agency.