The first female principal at Aria Group, Megan Walsh is a leader of the Chicago-based design studio’s restaurant and entertainment projects, working on everything from high-end steakhouses and celebrity chef-owned brands to multinational fast-casuals and neighborhood independents. Over nearly 25 years in the business, she’s become adept at balancing the often competing demands of restaurant projects: brand strategies, aesthetics, operations, budgets and timelines, to name a few. And she’s helped lead Aria into an era in which designing for inclusivity in sophisticated and strategic ways is a priority.

To that end, Walsh and the Aria team embrace principles of Universal Design, which promotes designing products, services and built environments in ways that make them accessible, understandable and useable by everyone, regardless of age, size, ability or disability. It’s not about simply meeting ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements, she notes, it’s about good, inclusive design. “ADA is the bare minimum, while Universal Design brings deeper perspective to the design process. It drives how we think about the entire guest journey, from arrival and waiting areas; to table size, shape, height and spacing; lighting and acoustics; menus and ordering; and restrooms,” Walsh says. “We approach inclusivity through a lens of empathy, thinking about what each user’s experience might be and removing friction points.”

Gaining empathy, she adds, is most powerfully accomplished through direct interaction — specifically, learning from people with accessibility issues about challenges and, in many cases, indignities that they can face in public spaces. She and her team attend Universal Design seminars and bring in speakers who, by sharing their experiences, help shift the narrative from meeting minimum requirements to creating integrated, inclusive designs. “It becomes personal to hear first-hand how a guest in a wheelchair moves through a space, how someone with vision or hearing loss, or someone who is neurodivergent, is or isn’t able to be in and enjoy a space,” she says. “There’s so much that we as designers can do to positively impact their experience.”

Among the inclusive design strategies the Aria team embraces and shares with clients:

• Choosing round or oval tables for larger groups, enabling hearing-impaired guests to more easily communicate.
• Carefully considering acoustics and lighting, with elderly and neurodivergent guests in mind.
• Designing seating, aisles and restrooms with generous space for wheelchair maneuvering.
• Creating seating plans that integrate rather than isolate accessible seating.
• Ensuring accessibility of electronic/AV controls in private-dining rooms.
• Integrating tech-based assistive tools, including app-based order and pay, which can remove friction points for guests with vision and hearing impairments.
• Designing gender-neutral restrooms, with inclusive signage.

“The bottom line is we want to welcome all people — not just 80 percent of the people — in the spaces we design,” she says. “Everyone should be able to experience the power of restaurants and enjoy opportunities to connect and engage with family and friends over a great meal. Inclusive design makes that possible.”