Designing for Everyone: A New Diploma in Universal Design
Mathew Sebastian
design-thinking-practioner
A six-month, studio-led diploma — awarded by Mahatma Gandhi University, offered by HCD Institute, and co-delivered with the Design Innovation Centre at IIT Hyderabad. Launching late September 2026 at the Inter University Centre for Disability Studies, Kottayam.
Nearly every space, product and service around us was designed for an imagined "average" person who doesn't exist. The result is a world full of small, avoidable exclusions — a step where a ramp should be, a form no screen reader can follow, a sign only some of us can read.
Universal Design is the discipline that fixes this at the source: designing from the outset for the full range of human ability, so that accommodation is rarely needed as an afterthought. In India, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 has made accessibility a legal obligation across our built environment, digital services and public systems. What we have been missing is enough professionals trained to design for it.
We are starting to change that.
What we're launching
This September, HCD Institute — together with Mahatma Gandhi University and the Design Innovation Centre (DIC) at IIT Hyderabad — opens admissions for a new Diploma in Universal Design, hosted at MG University's Inter University Centre for Disability Studies (IUCDS).
It is a six-month, intensive programme, and among the first of its kind in India. The diploma is awarded by MG University, the curriculum is built and delivered by HCD Institute in its studio tradition, and DIC IIT Hyderabad brings design-domain depth and research. Anchoring it all at IUCDS means something no ordinary design course can offer: the rights-based scholarship and lived experience of the disability community are in the room from day one — not cited from a textbook, but shaping the work.
What makes it different
Most accessibility training teaches compliance — how to meet a checklist. This diploma teaches design. It is built around three convictions:
Design with, not for. Participants learn to co-design alongside disabled users, treating lived experience as expertise rather than a case study.
Learn by making. After a tight conceptual foundation, most of the six months is spent in the studio — auditing real spaces, prototyping, testing, and delivering a live capstone project sourced through IUCDS's community.
Mix the disciplines. The cohort is deliberately multidisciplinary. When an architect, an occupational therapist, a civil servant and a person with a disability solve a brief together, the friction between their perspectives is the learning.
Who it's for
The programme is designed for professionals and graduates whose work shapes how people experience the world:
Architects, engineers, planners and interior and landscape designers
Product, UX/UI and communication designers, and digital-accessibility specialists
Civil services officers and administrators who commission and enforce accessibility at scale
Doctors, occupational and physiotherapists, rehabilitation professionals and special educators
Disability-rights advocates — and, importantly, persons with disabilities training to become professional accessibility auditors and consultants
What you'll walk away with
By the end, graduates can read disability through the social and rights-based model, apply the principles of Universal Design across the built environment, digital products and services, run a participatory design process, conduct an accessibility audit against Indian and international standards, and carry a real project from brief to tested prototype.
A first step toward something larger
We see this diploma as a beginning. Our shared ambition with IUCDS is to grow the Centre into a place where inclusive design is not only taught but applied — a design implementation and consultancy hub that turns research and lived experience into real, accessible solutions for communities across the region. The diploma builds the people and the practice; that practice will need somewhere to work.
Join the first cohort
The first cohort is small by design, to keep the studio close and the mentoring real. The programme begins in late September 2026 at IUCDS, MG University, Kottayam.
If you build, commission, care for or advocate — and you want to learn to do it for everyone — we would love to hear from you.
Enquiries and expressions of interest dic@hcd.institute
The HCD Institute
Design Innovation Centre (DIC)
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad Kandi, Sangareddy,
Telangana, India – 502284
dic@hcd.institute
dic@iit.ac.in
HCD Worldwide
Certification
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Designing for Everyone: A New Diploma in Universal Design
Mathew Sebastian
design-thinking-practioner
A six-month, studio-led diploma — awarded by Mahatma Gandhi University, offered by HCD Institute, and co-delivered with the Design Innovation Centre at IIT Hyderabad. Launching late September 2026 at the Inter University Centre for Disability Studies, Kottayam.
Nearly every space, product and service around us was designed for an imagined "average" person who doesn't exist. The result is a world full of small, avoidable exclusions — a step where a ramp should be, a form no screen reader can follow, a sign only some of us can read.
Universal Design is the discipline that fixes this at the source: designing from the outset for the full range of human ability, so that accommodation is rarely needed as an afterthought. In India, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 has made accessibility a legal obligation across our built environment, digital services and public systems. What we have been missing is enough professionals trained to design for it.
We are starting to change that.
What we're launching
This September, HCD Institute — together with Mahatma Gandhi University and the Design Innovation Centre (DIC) at IIT Hyderabad — opens admissions for a new Diploma in Universal Design, hosted at MG University's Inter University Centre for Disability Studies (IUCDS).
It is a six-month, intensive programme, and among the first of its kind in India. The diploma is awarded by MG University, the curriculum is built and delivered by HCD Institute in its studio tradition, and DIC IIT Hyderabad brings design-domain depth and research. Anchoring it all at IUCDS means something no ordinary design course can offer: the rights-based scholarship and lived experience of the disability community are in the room from day one — not cited from a textbook, but shaping the work.
What makes it different
Most accessibility training teaches compliance — how to meet a checklist. This diploma teaches design. It is built around three convictions:
Design with, not for. Participants learn to co-design alongside disabled users, treating lived experience as expertise rather than a case study.
Learn by making. After a tight conceptual foundation, most of the six months is spent in the studio — auditing real spaces, prototyping, testing, and delivering a live capstone project sourced through IUCDS's community.
Mix the disciplines. The cohort is deliberately multidisciplinary. When an architect, an occupational therapist, a civil servant and a person with a disability solve a brief together, the friction between their perspectives is the learning.
Who it's for
The programme is designed for professionals and graduates whose work shapes how people experience the world:
Architects, engineers, planners and interior and landscape designers
Product, UX/UI and communication designers, and digital-accessibility specialists
Civil services officers and administrators who commission and enforce accessibility at scale
Doctors, occupational and physiotherapists, rehabilitation professionals and special educators
Disability-rights advocates — and, importantly, persons with disabilities training to become professional accessibility auditors and consultants
What you'll walk away with
By the end, graduates can read disability through the social and rights-based model, apply the principles of Universal Design across the built environment, digital products and services, run a participatory design process, conduct an accessibility audit against Indian and international standards, and carry a real project from brief to tested prototype.
A first step toward something larger
We see this diploma as a beginning. Our shared ambition with IUCDS is to grow the Centre into a place where inclusive design is not only taught but applied — a design implementation and consultancy hub that turns research and lived experience into real, accessible solutions for communities across the region. The diploma builds the people and the practice; that practice will need somewhere to work.
Join the first cohort
The first cohort is small by design, to keep the studio close and the mentoring real. The programme begins in late September 2026 at IUCDS, MG University, Kottayam.
If you build, commission, care for or advocate — and you want to learn to do it for everyone — we would love to hear from you.
Enquiries and expressions of interest dic@hcd.institute
The HCD Institute
Design Innovation Centre (DIC)
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
Kandi, Sangareddy, Telangana, India – 502284
Certification
HCDx in Public Policy
HCDx in Global Supplychain
