Teaching Students with Disabilities: Universal Instructional Design

Best practices for teaching students with disabilities

Best practices for teaching students with disabilities are the very same practices that are effective for all students. Good teaching is good teaching.

One successful model for good teaching is called Universal Instructional Design, or UID. We like CAST's (www.cast.org) definition, which says that in the UID model, "curriculum should include alternatives to make it accessible and appropriate for individuals with different backgrounds, learning styles, abilities, and disabilities in widely varied learning contexts".

Think of it this way: a curb cut makes it easier for a person using a wheelchair to get from the street to the sidewalk-but that same curb cut is also used by people pushing strollers, rollerbladers, older people, or people pulling luggage. It's a design feature that is universal in its approach to access.

Now apply that idea to the educational environment to create an "academic curb cut". Put your course materials on a website, and you have immediately made your course accessible in a number of ways:

• A blind student can download the text and use a screenreader to hear the text read aloud, or have it Brailled
• a student for whom English is a second language can participate in an online discussion, taking as much time as he needs to compose his answer
• a student with a learning disability can use special software to engage with the text, or use a screenreader to hear the text orally as she reads along, increasing comprehension
• a student parent can access online links and conduct research at convenient times.

Of course, technology isn't always the answer. Good teaching is about much more than that.

Universal Instructional Design

Learn about applying Universal Instructional Design in your classes.

The information on this and related pages is adapted from the work of Curriculum Transformation and Disability (CTAD), a collaboration of the University of Minnesota's General College and Disability Services. Curriculum Transformation and Disability was funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education. Project # P333A990015.