Week 1

Accessibility/Universal Design for Learning

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OVERVIEW

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UDL was developed in the 1990s and early 2000s by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). It is a framework focused on designing adaptable and welcoming learning spaces. By offering varied ways of presenting content, fostering engagement, and allowing expression, it meets the diverse needs and styles of learners. The goal is to craft educational materials that everyone, no matter their physical or cognitive strengths, can access and benefit from. Beyond being a moral responsibility, making education accessible is also a legal mandate. Laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the U.S. and comparable ones elsewhere emphasize the importance of equal educational opportunities for all.

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KEY LEARNINGS​

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The UDL Design Cycle begins with a learner analysis and bases instructional design decisions on what we know about our learners. Digital tools and multimodal formats that are used for online teaching provide many ways to address UDL. To ensure that these tools are used to support all learners in the online/hybrid classroom, it is helpful to consider their usage as part of an intentional design process. 

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CORE CONCEPTS​

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Addressing Learner Variability - UDL researchers emphasize that there are no “average” or “typical” learner and that all learners have varied abilities, strengths, experiences, and preferences. 

 

Reducing Barriers in Curriculum and Instruction - Consider the curriculum as disabled, not the learner.  Identify barriers in the curriculum and in the instructional process and reduce or eliminate those barriers by designing appropriate supports.

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Developing Expert Learners - 

1. Being purposeful and motivated (related to the UDL principle of engagement) refers to learners’ abilities to be goal-directed, sustain effort, and self-regulate as they learn.

2. Being resourceful and knowledgeable (related to the UDL principle of representation) refers to learners’ abilities to activate and connect to prior knowledge, recognize strategies to structure and retain knowledge, and transfer and generalize what they learn.

3. Being strategic and goal-directed (related to the UDL principle of action & expression) refers to learners’ abilities to plan and organize how they learn, be strategic learners, and self-monitor as they learn.

 

Considerations for creating accessible content  

• Properly format and tag headings and text - avoid manually formatting the font, size, or color of your text to create document headings.  

• Add ALT text and avoid embedding a lot of text within images. Any text contained in the image itself is not machine-readable. Mark images as “decorative” so readers skip

• Be careful with color. Avoid using colored text to create emphasis, as that emphasis will not be apparent to some students. Maximize contrast ratio. 

• Check reading order. Reading order is often impacted by the order in which you actually placed the items on the page when creating the document - One trick to ensure the correct reading order is to keep things linear on the page or screen, as screen readers will read the content from the top to the bottom by default. Another strategy is to avoid using tables to present content unless you are presenting statistical data. 

• Make sure videos have closed captions. 

• Use an accessibility checker. Most applications have one. ​

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

 

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

Authoring Tools:  https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/atag/

User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/uaag/

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WebAIM: https://webaim.org/intro/

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IMPLICATIONS OF ACCESSIBILITY FOR INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

As an instructional designer, understanding accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is essential. Every learner brings a unique set of backgrounds, abilities, and learning preferences. By incorporating the principles of UDL into instructional design, we can ensure content is adaptable and caters to a broad spectrum of cognitive, sensory, and physical abilities, making effective and meaningful learning experiences available for everyone. Beyond these human benefits, there are legal ramifications to consider. Many countries, including the United States, with its Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), have put forth regulations mandating that educational materials must be accessible to all, irrespective of any disabilities. Being well-versed in UDL and accessibility not only aids in compliance with these laws but also positions the designer as a forward-thinker, attuned to the evolving needs of the modern learner. In essence, by championing accessibility and UDL, you're ensuring that learning is not just a standardized process but a universally inclusive journey.

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