Sidewalk cut-ins. Elevators. Buttons that open doors. If you’ve ever been out and about in a wheelchair, used a dolly to move furniture, or pushed a baby stroller, you know to look for and use these things. But the fact is these innovations are relatively recent and were not mandated until the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990.

While the aim of the ADA is to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities and provide for their access to public places, the effects of the law have impacted a broader segment of the population.

For instance, in my neighborhood many people use collapsible carts when they walk to and from the grocery store. It is much easier to push these carts when the sidewalks have ramps (aka cut-ins) and the stores have automatic doors and elevators. A new grocery store would need to include these features in order to comply with the ADA, but the result is that these features also benefit a larger group of people than those relying on wheelchairs or crutches. People pushing grocery carts, employees making deliveries, and parents with small children in strollers all benefit from accessible features.

This analogy can be extended to the courses we teach and help design. If we take the steps to make sure our courses are accessible to students with disabilities, we inevitably end up designing courses that are more accessible to everyone. This includes students whose primary language is not English, students who are the first in their families to go to college, and students with varying learning preferences or past education experiences.

A Helpful Framework: Universal Design for Learning

Designing for accessibility, also called “universal design,” can be adapted to a wide variety of contexts, as seen with the grocery cart example. The term “universal design” was coined by Ronald Mace, an architect who played a significant role in the development of accessibility standards for buildings and later, the ADA itself. According to Mace:

“Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.”

Universal design has since gained currency in other disciplines, and can be found in a range of fields, from transportation to technology and ergonomics to education. One universal design framework that is rooted in the learning sciences is called Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

UDL was first formulated by David H. Rose of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and other researchers affiliated with the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). In 2008, UDL was referenced in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 and defined as follows:

The term “universal design for learning” means a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that:

1. provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and
2. reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students, including students with disabilities and students who are limited English proficient.

UDL posits that difference between individual learners is the norm: There is is no mythical “average student” that should be kept in mind when designing learning experiences. Instead, instructors should assume their students possess a range of learning preferences and needs, and work toward creating an inclusive learning environment that benefits all learners.

The authors of UDL have created a model based in the learning sciences of how instructional design can be made inclusive and it involves three main principles:

1. Provide multiple means of engagement
2. Provide multiple means of representation
3. Provide multiple means of action and expression

The following sections define and illustrate these three principles, but if you’d prefer to view a detailed visual representation of them, go ahead and visit http://udlguidelines.cast.org/.

Provide Multiple Means of Engagement: The Why of Learning

Not everyone is motivated to learn in the exact same way. In any given class, some learners will possess intrinsic motivation to learn everything they can about a topic while others will be more motivated by extrinsic concerns, such as grades and maintaining a high GPA. The principle of offering multiple means of engagement addresses how learners vary according to three dimensions: recruiting interest, sustaining effort and persistence, and self-regulation.

1. Recruiting interest. Help your students become excited to learn what you’re teaching. Examples include encouraging students to set their own goals for their learning in your course, offering students some degree of choice in terms of in-class or out-of-class learning activities, connecting to students’ prior learning, and creating safe and inclusive learning environments.
2. Sustaining effort and persistence. Support your students to stay focused and determined despite the challenges involved in learning new things. Examples include being explicit about course and assignment objectives, fostering collaboration, and giving feedback to help students master the knowledge, skills and abilities they need to succeed in your course.
3. Self regulation. Promote behaviors and beliefs that help students manage their emotions and conduct in ways that facilitate learning. Examples include discussing the  power of goal setting and strategies for dealing with setbacks, providing aides and information about resources for coping with stress, and helping students become self-reflective learners.

Visit the CAST website for more information on engagement, where you’ll find specific checkpoints for each of the items above.

Provide Multiple Means of Representation: The What of Learning

This principle has everything to do with your course content and how you go about communicating it. The basic goal is to offer multiple ways for your students to encounter and understand the information you are conveying, because not everyone learns the same way.

There are three guidelines that fall under the principle of multiple means of representation:

1. Perception. Provide your students with opportunities to interact with multimodal content that that doesn’t depend on a single sense like sight, hearing, movement, or touch. Examples include providing options for your students to replay your lectures, providing closed captioning for video, and selecting course materials that can be viewed electronically or in print.
2. Language & Symbols. Create a shared understanding for languages and symbols you use in your course. For instance, define any specialized jargon, clarify important elements of syntax and structure, and support the understanding of text, mathematical notations and other symbols.
3. Comprehension. Help your students construct meaning and generate new understandings by activating or supplying key background knowledge, highlighting recurring patterns and big ideas in your field, and helping students transfer knowledge from one discipline or context to another.

Visit the CAST website for more information on representation, including specific checkpoints for each of the guidelines presented above.

Provide Multiple Means of Action & Expression: The How of Learning

Similar to how the other two principles call for providing students with a range of options for engaging and perceiving your course content, this final principle calls for you to provide a range of options for students to express and demonstrate what they know. While some students prefer to demonstrate their learning through writing, others may have a strong preference or aptitude for speaking and presenting to their classmates while others may excel in timed examinations. The reality is that there is no one perfect means for students to demonstrate their learning.

With this understanding, CAST developed the following three guidelines, grounded in both qualitative and quantitative research:

1. Physical action. Make sure your course content and learning activities can be engaged by students who have difficulties with gross motor control in a physical environment or navigating and accessing information online. For instance, offer alternatives to using Scantron and a pencil for marking examinations or ensuring that your online course can be accessed with assistive technologies like screen readers or keyboard commands instead of mouse clicking.
2. Expression & communication. Use more than one media for communicating course content and allow your students to compose texts or construct things using different tools.
3. Executive functions. Guide your students in setting appropriate goals and developing plans or strategies to accomplish tasks. Offer or direct your students to resources for managing information (such as bibliographic or research tools) and assist them in developing the capacities to monitor their own progress.

Visit the CAST website for more information on action and expression, including specific checkpoints for each of the guidelines presented above.

Taking Baby Steps

If you’ve made it this far in the post, you might be feeling overwhelmed. I know that is what I felt after encountering UDL for the first time. You might even be thinking, “Who on earth has time to build or revise their course to include all these elements?” or “I’m just exhausted by reading the guidelines, how will I ever put them into practice?” Those were some of my initial thoughts, anyway.

But before panic or despair sets in, take a moment to reflect on how these elements may already be a part of the courses you teach. For instance, if you provide your students with more than just packet of texts as a means of teaching them, then it’s likely are you are providing multiple options for representation. And if you assess your students’ performance using other means than just multiple choice exams, you are likely offering them options for action and representation.

So perhaps the best question to ask yourself is, “How might I extend my efforts at incorporating the principles of UDL to further support my students?” Just like UDL asks us to help our students with appropriate goal-setting, take a moment to set some achievable goals for yourself. And if you wish, please share in the comments how you can further support your students using the principles of UDL.