My journey in advocating for accessible education started many years ago and in a different country. Colombia is my country of origin, and over there, the main barrier to accessing education is poverty. Therefore, my efforts were focused on helping students in vulnerable situations and their teachers create meaningful and affordable learning experiences. This was done for both online and in-person learning environments.

Fast forward a few years, and my life path took me to Québec, Canada, where my Master’s Degree in Educational Technology allowed me to discover new facets of providing quality learning experiences and increased my focus on expanding the reach of education to audiences sometimes overlooked.

Even before the Covid pandemic, teachers and professors worldwide were faced with multiple challenges that required them to teach larger classes with groups of increasingly diverse students. These students require more inclusive and accessible online learning environments. According to Statistics Canada’s 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability, 27% of Canadians aged 15 years and older — about 8.0 million people — had one or more disabilities that limited them in their daily activities, up from 22% (6.2 million) in 2017. This makes the need for accessible and inclusive education even more evident.

This requires faculty members to be equipped with pedagogical and technical skills that will allow them to better respond to their students’ needs. For this to be possible, faculty members need the support of technical experts and accessibility specialists.

Benefits for all

It is essential to emphasize that accessible education is not a matter that concerns only a small population, as some people might have been led to believe. Instead, accessible instruction could benefit all students with and without disabilities. For instance, closed-captioned videos can benefit people who:

  • have a hearing impairment,
  • are in a noisy environment,
  • are not native speakers of the language in which the video was narrated or recorded.

Additionally, as stated by Wideman and Odrowski (2012), accessible instruction can help educators reduce learning barriers, augment student engagement, increase student self-efficacy, empower students to be independent learners and share their knowledge with their peers. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is one framework that supports accessible and inclusive instruction by helping educators anticipate learner variability and proactively reduce barriers.

To equip faculty members with knowledge and strategies to teach effectively in a digital age, it is important that educators become familiar with current UDL and accessibility best practices and understand how the two complement one another in creating more inclusive courses.

UD, UDI and UDL

Universal Design (UD): The Center for Universal Design (CUD) at North Carolina State University defined UD as “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 of Instruction (UDI) is the application of UD principles, which originated in the field of architecture, to teaching and learning practices.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing learning environments and experiences that are accessible, inclusive, equitable and appropriately challenging for every learner. It focuses on proactively reducing barriers while maintaining clear and rigorous learning goals.

CAST’s current UDL Guidelines 3.0, released in 2024, build on earlier versions of the framework and place greater emphasis on learner agency, identity, belonging, interdependence, multiple ways of knowing, and barriers rooted in bias and systems of exclusion.

The three core UDL principles remain multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression:

  • Multiple means of engagement: Designing options that support learners’ interests and identities, choice and autonomy, belonging, collaboration, appropriate challenge, and sustained effort.
  • Multiple means of representation: Presenting information in different accessible formats and supporting learners in perceiving, interpreting and making meaning from course content.
  • Multiple means of action and expression: Providing accessible ways for learners to act, communicate and demonstrate learning. When offering different assessment formats, the options should still measure the same intended learning outcomes; where a specific mode or skill is itself part of the learning objective, that requirement should be maintained.

These UDL principles are supported by researchers such as Dell, Dell and Blackwell (2015) and Al-Azawei, Serenelli and Lundqvist (2016), and remain central to CAST’s current framework. They can be used as guidelines in the design of online curricula for higher education and for teaching diverse populations of learners, including learners with disabilities.

Below you will find a summary of the UD and UDI principles and guidelines. You will note how they intersect, and you will find some practical examples on how to apply them in instructional settings. These principles and guidelines were identified and adapted by Sheryl Burgstahler, author and accessibility advocate.

Tables 1 and 2. Universal Design Principles and Applications in Higher Education. The content of these tables was taken and adapted from: Universal Design of Instruction (UDI): Definition, Principles, Guidelines, and Examples

TABLE 1

UD Principle

Application in Instruction

Equitable use

The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities. Example: A professor’s website is designed to be accessible to everyone, including students who are blind and using text-to-speech software.

Flexibility in use

The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. Example: A museum, visited as a field trip for a course, allows each student to choose to read or listen to a description of the contents of display cases.

Simple and intuitive use

The use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level. Example: Control buttons on science equipment are labelled with text and symbols that are simple and intuitive to understand.

Perceptible information

The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities. Example: A video presentation projected in a course includes captions.

Tolerance for error

The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions. Example: Educational software provides guidance and background information when the student makes an inappropriate response.

Low physical effort

The design can be used efficiently, comfortably, and with a minimum of fatigue. Example: Doors to a lecture hall open automatically for people with a wide variety of physical characteristics.

Size and space for approach and use

Appropriate size and space are provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of the user’s body size, posture, or mobility. Example: A flexible science lab work area has an adequate workspace for left- or right-handed students and those who need to work from a standing or seated position.

 

TABLE 2

UDI Principle

Guidelines

Examples

Class climate

Adopt practices that reflect high values concerning both diversity and inclusiveness.

Put a statement on your syllabus inviting students to meet with you to discuss disability-related accommodations, accessibility requirements, or barriers they may encounter in the course.

Interaction

Encourage regular and effective interactions between students and the instructor and ensure that communication methods are accessible to all participants.

Assign group work where learners must support each other, which places a high value on different skills and roles.

Physical environments and products

Ensure that facilities, activities, materials, and equipment are physically accessible to and usable by all students and that all potential student characteristics are addressed in safety considerations.

Develop safety procedures that account for a wide range of learners, including students who are blind or have low vision, students who are Deaf or hard of hearing, and students with mobility-related access requirements.

Delivery methods

Use multiple, accessible instructional methods that are accessible to all learners.

Use multiple modes to deliver content; when possible, allow students to choose from multiple options for learning; and motivate and engage students-consider lectures, collaborative learning options, hands-on activities, Internet-based communications, educational software, fieldwork, and so forth.

Information resources and technology

Ensure that course materials, notes, and other information resources are engaging, flexible, and accessible for all students.

Choose printed materials and prepare a syllabus early to allow students the option of beginning to read materials and work on assignments before the course begins. Allow adequate time to arrange for alternate formats, such as books in audio format.

Feedback

Provide specific feedback regularly.

Allow students to turn in parts of large projects for feedback before the final project is due.

Assessment

Regularly assess student progress using accessible methods and tools, provide options where appropriate, and adjust instruction accordingly while ensuring that assessment methods remain aligned with the intended learning outcomes.

Assess group and cooperative performance, as well as individual achievement.

Accommodation

Plan for accommodations for students whose needs are not fully addressed by the instructional design. Universal design can reduce barriers and the need for some individual adjustments, but it does not replace the need or responsibility to provide accommodations.

Know campus protocols for getting materials in alternate formats, rescheduling classroom locations, and arranging for other accommodations for students with disabilities.

 

How to approach resistance to change

There are obvious barriers hindering the implementation of accessibility principles in higher education for online learning. On this matter, authors like Rao, Edelen-Smith and Wailehua (2015) and Horvitz, Beach, Anderson and Xia (2014) postulate that faculty often feel overwhelmed by their full teaching loads and institutional responsibilities. These negative sentiments can lead professors to believe that implementing accessibility principles in their online courses would be an extra burden – something else to add to their already hectic schedules.

However, as these authors remark, there are different approaches universities can take to support their faculty on this endeavour. For instance, it is important to emphasize that even if adjusting online content to be accessible can take considerable amounts of time and effort at the beginning, the flexible format of these accessible components lends itself to being reused and repurposed for future course iterations (Rao, Edelen-Smith & Wailehua, 2015).

Universities can support professors by providing professional development opportunities and recognizing that proactive, deliberate instructional design takes time. Instructors may require additional support to create flexible resources, use emerging technologies, and work with accessibility and disability support services to integrate specific supports students may need (Rao, Edelen-Smith & Wailehua, 2015). Linder, Fontaine-Rainen and Behling (2015) further suggest that institutions can reduce faculty apprehension by shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach: accessibility should be considered from the beginning of course and curriculum design, rather than only after barriers have been identified. Teaching and Learning Centres and accessibility services can support this work through workshops and one-on-one consultations. A proactive accessibility culture can reduce avoidable barriers and remediation work while still preserving individual accommodations when needed.

Integrating accessibility principles in online learning is not a one-time fix; it requires ongoing modelling, support, evaluation and improvement. Evmenova (2018) suggests that educators are more likely to implement UDL principles when they have been exposed to effective UDL modelling. Accessible instruction therefore involves more than explaining accessibility requirements and expecting faculty members to implement them alone: it requires institutional support, inclusive design practices, and an understanding of the benefits these approaches can bring to all learners.

References:
Al-Azawei, A., Serenelli, F., & Lundqvist, K. (2016). Universal Design for Learning (UDL): A Content Analysis of Peer Reviewed Journals from 2012 to 2015. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16 (3), 39-56. doi:10.14434/josotl.v16i3.19295
Dell, C. A., Dell, T., & Blackwell, T. (2015). Applying Universal Design for Learning in Online Courses: Pedagogical and Practical Considerations. The Journal of Educators Online, 12(2). doi:10.9743/jeo.2015.2.1
Evmenova, A. (2018). Preparing Teachers to Use Universal Design for Learning to Support Diverse Learners. Journal of Online Learning Research, 4(2), 147–171.
Horvitz, B. S., Beach, A. L., Anderson, M. L., & Xia, J. (2014). Examination of Faculty Self-efficacy Related to Online Teaching. Innovative Higher Education,40(4), 305-316. doi:10.1007/s10755-014-9316-1
Linder, K. E., Fontaine-Rainen, D. L., & Behling, K. (2015). Whose job is it? Key challenges and future directions for online accessibility in US Institutions of Higher Education. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning,30(1), 21-34. doi:10.1080/02680513.2015.1007859
Rao, K., Edelen-Smith, P., & Wailehua, C. (2015). Universal design for online courses: Applying principles to pedagogy. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning,30(1), 35-52. doi:10.1080/02680513.2014.991300
CAST. (2024). CAST Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0. Lynnfield, MA: CAST. https://udlguidelines.cast.org
Statistics Canada. (2024). The disability rate in Canada increased in 2022. Findings from the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability.