The challenge
The Ellis Island National Immigration Museum is undergoing a $100m overhaul to introduce new interactive kiosks and dynamic media exhibits. The National Park Service needed to guarantee legal compliance under Section 508 and Smithsonian accessibility guidelines while ensuring the museum was genuinely usable for all visitors. The primary risk was fragmented execution. The programme involved dozens of independent creative and technology vendors, making consistency the central challenge.
My role
As lead accessibility consultant, I directed the compliance lifecycle across the programme. I established shared standards for twelve vendor teams, ran weekly clinics with design partners, and audited work from early concepts to final sign-off. I worked directly with vendors on interaction design to help their teams adapt layouts and navigation patterns to meet strict inclusive benchmarks.
Technical and physical execution
Designing for a historic public landmark required solving physical and digital challenges simultaneously.
Hardware-based testing and auditing Testing interactive exhibits on desktop monitors misses critical physical constraints like screen glare and reach angles. I built a custom progressive web app for field auditors to measure physical conformance directly on the gallery floor. We also held prototype testing sessions using production kiosk hardware, recruiting participants through regional disability organisations to evaluate real-world screen-reader challenges.
Narrative inclusion Museum accessibility often defaults to dry technical descriptions. I wrote a 50-page narrative accessibility guide in partnership with community advocacy groups. It established standards for alt-text and audio description that maintained the historical gravity of sensitive topics such as racial discrimination and medical exclusion.
Standardising across vendors We collaborated with software vendors to produce a modular suite of touch-screen templates. Standardising touch targets and interactive layouts across all 60 exhibits reduced development overhead and ensured predictable navigation. Visual identity agencies initially favoured period colour palettes with low contrast. I worked alongside their art directors to adjust tonal values, preserving the historic character of the branding while satisfying WCAG 2.2 AA contrast ratios.
The outcomes
We brought all digital interactives into full compliance with federal accessibility standards. By tracking all 60 exhibits in a centralised Airtable database, we identified and corrected physical reach and layout issues in software prototypes before costly hardware installation began. The guidelines and custom PWA audit tools created for Ellis Island now provide a working blueprint for future National Park Service museum refurbishments.