Accessibility in 5

Welcome to Accessibility in 5, a UFIT series where we share quick tips for making your content more accessible—in five minutes or less. I’m Tammy, and today we’re looking at Universal Design for Learning, or UDL.

A few intentional design choices can make your course or web content more inclusive, flexible, and effective for all students.

There are three primary areas for UDL: Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression. Each area contains multiple design options, but we will focus on just a few.

Students learn best when they feel connected to the material and the learning environment. Student motivation and excitement for learning vary, so providing multiple options for engagement is the best practice.

The following tips can increase student engagement:

Provide authentic choices for students to reach learning goals. Some choices to consider are:

• Embedded choices, like the sequence or timing for task completion
• Opportunities for practicing and assessing learning
• Tools used for exploration or production
• Real-world examples or case studies to make content more meaningful and relevant

But choices alone aren’t enough. Students also need structure and support—that’s where sustaining effort and persistence comes in.

Sustaining effort and persistence also increases student engagement. This means that the learning environment is structured, so students have clear learning goals and are provided with the support to work toward them. Sustaining effort and persistence can look like this:

• Restate and display clear learning goals, and include tools and supports to help students engage with them
• Provide multiple ways to develop relationships while learning
• Include opportunities for peer feedback or collaborative learning to build community
• Create clear paths for students to ask for help
• Encourage questions
• Provide feedback that is timely, specific, and focused on helping students grow

Representation

Along with engagement, the way information is presented also matters. That brings us to the second UDL area: Representation.

Designing multiple means of representation is key in UDL. Since learners differ in how they perceive and make meaning of information, providing options is important.

Here are some tips to ensure learners have access to class information:

Ensure key information is accessible in multiple modalities—such as text, audio, video, and interactive formats—to support diverse learning needs. Adhering to the WCAG AA standards mentioned in the previous Accessibility in 5 videos supports UDL.

Beyond modalities, it also helps to guide learners in making connections and understanding key concepts.

Here are other considerations for multiple means of representation:

• Connect new materials to prior knowledge
• Explicitly reveal relationships between elements
• Embed hyperlinks, footnotes, illustrations, etc. to support unfamiliar terms, symbols, or references
• Define key terms and use plain language to support comprehension

Well-designed learning materials use multiple ways to build knowledge. Some of those ways can look like this:

• Provide learners with different ways to demonstrate knowledge
• Make a sequential process clear by using prompts for each step
• Chunk information to make it digestible
• Remove distractions that do not support the instructional goal

Action & Expression

We’ve talked about how students connect and how they receive information—now let’s look at the third UDL area: Action and Expression, which is all about how students show what they know.  

There are different ways to go through a learning process and to express knowledge. Recognizing this and designing with intention benefits learners.

Reduce barriers to learning by considering the following:

• Offer various methods for response, navigation, and movement. This could look like embedding flexibility for timing or alternatives to using a mouse, such as keyboard navigation
• Ensure materials are compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers
• Use interactive web tools for collaboration, such as discussions, chats, or annotations
• Allow students to express learning through creative formats like video, audio, or infographics

Once barriers are reduced, the next step is supporting students in developing their own strategies for success.

Support strategy development by helping students set meaningful goals, anticipate challenges, and monitor their progress.

• Use rubrics, checklists, models, and examples
• Use prompts to guide students through multi-step tasks
• Provide tools for organizing information and tracking learning
• Encourage reflection and revision as part of the learning process

Universal Design for Learning is about designing with intention—so all students have a fair chance to engage, understand, and express their learning. Even small changes can have a big impact.

Thanks for watching and join us next time to learn more accessibility tips in 5 minutes or less.

The UDL Guidelines