11 Implementing UDL

Implementing UDL helps all learners.

UDL is used to create course materials that are accessible to not only students with disabilities, but students of all abilities.

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (Links to an external site.) recognizes UDL as a “scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice” and supports implementation at the post-secondary level of education. The application of UDL principles provides strategies to address the learning variability of all of your students while breaking down unintentional barriers to learning.

Let’s say that you’ve decided to incorporate a video into your online course. Applying UDL principles, such as adding captions in advance, will not only prepare your class in the event that you have a student with a hearing impairment enrolled, but it will benefit other students from day one. For example:

• A student for whom English is a second language will comprehend the audio better because accents and other auditory distractions will not conflict with processing the information.
• A student with a learning disability who has difficulty processing audio information may benefit from reading the captions instead of relying on the audio portion for information.
• Most learners will benefit from captioning because having access to the text has been shown to improve retention.
• A student who has a hectic schedule and is working on completing an assignment while in a library setting, may be required to listen to an instructional video provided by the faculty member in order to complete the assignment. If she does not have access to a set of headphones, she will be unable to complete the assignment unless the video is already captioned. Applying UDL principles to your course materials will improve access and instruction for all students with various learning variabilities, cultural backgrounds, and environments.

Through this program, you will be presented with concrete ways to apply UDL at multiple points in your online course design.