For referral partners

You assess the body. Somebody has to translate that into a building.

I'm a residential accessibility consultant in Chicago.

You have written the recommendation. Grab bar here, clearance there, a seat in the shower. Then it goes home with a family who has to turn it into decisions about walls, budgets and a contractor's schedule, and most of what you wrote gets approximated or dropped.

What happens to your recommendation after it leaves your office.

I don't assess anybody. I take what you assessed and work out what it means for the building: which wall can carry blocking, which door swings the wrong way, what the layout has to do differently, and which of it is nearly free before the drywall goes on.

Your recommendation stays yours. What I add is the part that happens after it, in a house, with a builder who has never read it.

1 in 10,400

Roughly 7,000 certified professionals in this field, against 73 million boomers. You already know this from trying to refer someone.

1%

Of US homes have all five core accessibility features. The housing stock was never built for the people now living in it.

73%

Of remodelers report more of these requests than five years ago. The demand is not the constraint. Somebody knowing what to do with it is.

The training, and the part nobody certifies.

Certified Environmental Access Consultant, through VGM Live At Home. VGM Education is accredited by IACET, the program carries 0.6 IACET CEUs, and RESNA approves those CEUs toward recertification.

Design coursework at UCLA Extension. Before that, twenty years of making a case to people who could say no.

What it costs, and how to send someone

Published price, so you can say the number out loud.

The consultation

$1,197

Three sessions, spaced across their project rather than used up in a week. A written page they can hand to their contractor. And the course, included.

Session one, sixty minutes. The intake, live or by worksheet. No homework, and nothing to prepare.
Session two, forty minutes. The recommendations, once I've worked through everything. The written page follows within a week.
Session three, twenty minutes. Theirs after they've met a contractor, whenever that turns out to be. No expiry, and I won't chase them for it.

If an architect has already drawn something, they can say so when they book and session two becomes that drawing instead. Same price.

See it

The division of labour

You know what their body needs. I know what it costs to do it in the wrong order.

Nothing here replaces your assessment, and nothing here is clinical. This is the part that happens after you have written yours: turning it into decisions about a specific building, in a sequence, at prices somebody has to actually pay.

How to refer, or how to ask before you do.

Send them the link, or send me a note first if you would rather tell me what you are worried about.

hello@brianajwatson.com