The philosophy
Our view of education is larger than any one platform.
The application, the email, the portal, the form — these aren't plumbing. They're the first lesson a student learns about whether an institution expects them to already know the codes. We build them to say: you belong here.
Access is a right
The door must open as wide on a borrowed phone and a metered connection as on campus Wi-Fi. We carry the cost of performance so a student never pays for our bloat.
Accessibility is justice
Designing for everyone — every device, every ability — isn't compliance. It's who the front door is built for, named and enforced from the first pixel.
AI as a de-gatekeeper
Used well, AI lowers the barrier the center hoarded — giving the under-resourced what was kept from them. Aimed at the dispossessed, that's what makes it liberation.
Leaner is greener
Lean systems are less data, less energy, less carbon — and a lighter load on the people structural inequity already taxes. Measured, not assumed.
The services
A cross-disciplinary practice — across the silos the student falls between.
Most experiences fail in the gaps between teams: brand in one office, accessibility in another, engineering in a third. CLAVA works across all of them — and builds the platform that makes the result last. The practice outlives any single platform or tool.
Brand & design systems
Governed, accessible design systems that hold up across every surface and team — grounded in the institution's real brand, never invented.
Accessibility
WCAG 2.2 audits, remediation, and enforcement — gated so it can't regress. Led from the top, never bolted on.
Content strategy & remediation
Plain-language, accessible content at scale — an engine fixes the mechanical issues and flags the human calls; the words stay yours.
Email & lifecycle communications
Design-system-driven email (MJML / components) and lifecycle journeys that render everywhere and respect the reader — the channel that actually reaches applicants.
Systems & platform integration
Bringing the stack together — CMS, CRM, admissions platform, email — so the experience is one coherent thing, not seams the student trips on.
Organizational diagnosis
How an institution's internal structure and politics show up in its external experience — and what to change. Consulting, not a template.
AI-assisted delivery
High-leverage, AI-accelerated build and automation — more done, more reliably, for less — without surrendering craft or judgment.
The admissions platform
CLAVA's flagship product: on-brand, accessible admissions experiences across every instance, from one governed source — platform-agnostic by design.
The suite
Named instruments, one workshop.
CLAVA is a suite of platform-agnostic products — each useful on its own, all composing in the workshop. The names say nothing about any one platform on purpose: the practice outlives the tools.
Atelier
The workshop
Compose, check contrast, clean, and grade in one place — and the signed-in space where clients and work live.
Prism
Brand capture
Refract any brand from a URL into an accessible, WCAG-AA system and a ready build.
AFINA
Content, tuned
Tune every page to plain-language accessibility at scale — fix the safe, flag the human calls.
Loupe
The grade
Inspect any build for brand fidelity and leanness, measured against the field.
Atlas
The map
The landscape of institutions on the platform — registry, census, and the rendered catalogue.
Lexicon
The standard
The living style guide and editorial patterns, generated from what actually ships.
Depth ladder: Essence ⊂ Signature ⊂ Bespoke — accessibility holds at every tier.
Case study · the flagship platform
Not a stylesheet — a platform.
The flagship is the full admissions experience for a leading U.S. business school — every instance, every program, from one governed source. It's a set of engines under one identity, each single-sourced so the tool you use and the check that governs it can never disagree. The method — one source, gated, accessible — outlives any single platform.
Prism · harvest & brand
From a URL to an accessible brand
Point at any homepage; CLAVA extracts the palette, type, and logo and remediates every colour to WCAG-AA by construction — then emits a ready-to-ship build. Choose the depth: Essence, Signature, or Bespoke.
AFINA · content
Accessible content, at scale
A deterministic remediation engine audits and cleans application content for accessibility — the safe fixes automatically, the judgment calls flagged for an editor. Never touches your copy.
Loupe & Atlas · measure
Graded, against the field
A two-axis grade — how fully branded, and how lean for applicants — plus a benchmark of 100+ peer institutions. You see exactly where you stand.
Build & ship
One source, every instance
Apply one byte-identical, version-controlled brand across every admissions instance; ship per-instance releases, integrity-checked, with nothing left to drift.
How it works
Four steps, one governed source.
Harvest
Capture the brand from the live source — palette, type, logo — accessibility checked from the first pixel.
Brand
Apply it across every instance and program from one source. Pick the tier; the accessible floor holds at all of them.
Audit
Scan content for accessibility and equity; auto-fix the mechanical issues, flag the human judgment calls.
Govern & scale
Gates keep it from decaying; add the next instance — or the next institution — as configuration, not a rebuild.
Proof, not assertion
Measured against a hundred-school field.
CLAVA's first full build is a leading U.S. business school's admissions experience — every instance, every program. The numbers are verified against the working repository.
Every figure is sourced and gate-enforced — verified offline against faithful captures, not asserted.
Who it's for
The support your admissions team never had.
Your admissions team owns the platform. What they rarely have is dedicated Communications and IT support for the brand, the accessibility, and the engineering a public application needs.
CLAVA is that support — a product, not a person: the brand discipline, the accessibility enforcement, and the production-grade engineering, in one platform that doesn't depend on anyone's discretionary effort. It's how a school lives its mission in the first place a candidate meets it: a front door built for everyone.
The ethos
Values, enforced in code — not just stated.
The same principles apply to every client, and they're checked by automated gates, not goodwill.
Equity by default
The front door is built for everyone — never deficiency-framing an applicant or their device. Access is a right, gate-enforced.
Accessible to all
WCAG 2.2 AA on every change; brand contrast held to the stricter AAA. Accessibility is the first act of communication.
Leaner is greener
Lean code is less data, less energy, less carbon — and a lighter load on the applicant with the least. Measured, not assumed — see below.
Portable & efficient
Brand-agnostic and dependency-light: it runs anywhere, scales as configuration, and never locks an institution in.
Leaner is greener — measure it
The carbon cost of an application page
Estimate the CO₂ of a single application page, per year, at your volume — and what a weight budget saves.
Estimate via the Sustainable Web Design model (≈0.81 kWh/GB · 442 gCO₂/kWh, global grid), data-transfer energy only — directional, not a measurement. Honest note: CLAVA's served build (~35 KB gzip) is heavier than the leanest peers (a ~6 KB median) because one source carries five instances and full accessibility — but a shrink-only budget keeps it far from the 438 KB heavy tail. The discipline is the point.
The practice behind CLAVA
One person, working across the silos the applicant falls between.
I help institutions turn their most-used digital front door — the application — into something on-brand, accessible, and worthy of their mission, then build the platform that makes it last.
Most applicant experiences fail in the gaps between teams: brand sits in one office, accessibility in another, engineering in a third, and the strategy that should connect them nowhere. I work across all of them — design, accessibility, software engineering, and organizational strategy — which is exactly why the cracks get closed instead of papered over.
Beyond the tooling, the deeper work is diagnostic: how an institution's internal structure and politics show up in its external experience — and what to change. That's consulting, not a stylesheet.
CLAVA is my independent practice and product — clients license access; they own none of it. The first engagement is a leading U.S. business school; the same approach scales to any institution, on any platform. The practice spans brand, accessibility, engineering, and organizational strategy — including digital work covered by national press.
The horizon
One school, or every one.
Because the core is brand-agnostic, the same platform scales outward at near-zero marginal cost — each new instance is configuration, not a rebuild.
The first client
A maintained, accessible, unified admissions experience across every instance — that doesn't decay.
The wider institution
Any school or program adopts the same accessible, on-brand experience — fragmented per-instance spend becomes one shared capability.
Every institution
Any school can stand on the accessible, on-brand floor CLAVA provides. Doing it right once becomes a template for everywhere.
Get started
Bring CLAVA to your institution.
CLAVA is offered as a licensed product and service — talk to us about your institution.