Accessibility

"Universal Design For Learning" by giulia.forsythe is marked with CC0 1.0

Olympic College is committed to equal access to its educational and administrative services, programs, and activities. 

Universal Design for Learning is an iterative process that involves—

• Minimizing unnecessary barriers in spaces, instructional materials, assessments, and activities
• Providing supportive learning environments, learning spaces, and instructional methods
• Ensuring information is explicitly presented, readily perceived, is straightforward, consistent, and flexible in use and presentation.

"Precollege and college students come from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds. For some, English is not their first language. Also represented in most classes are students with a diversity of ages and learning styles, including visual and auditory. In addition, increasing numbers of students with disabilities are included in regular precollege and postsecondary courses. Their disabilities include blindness, low vision, hearing impairments, mobility impairments, learning disabilities, and health impairments.

"Students are in school to learn and instructors share this goal. How can educators design instruction to maximize the learning of all students? The field of universal design (UD) can provide a starting point for developing a framework for instruction. You can apply this body of knowledge to create courses that ensure lectures, discussions, visual aids, videos, printed materials, labs, and fieldwork are accessible to all students."

Sheryl Burgstahler, Ph. D. of the University of Washington.

Source: Universal Design of Instruction (UDI): Definition, Principles, Guidelines, and Examples

UDL (Universal Design for Learning) mirrors the Universal Design movement in architecture and product development, which calls for designs that serve the greatest number of possible users right from the start.

UDL is an educational approach with three primary principles: 

• Multiple means of representation - to give diverse learners options for acquiring information and knowledge,
• Multiple means of action and expression - to provide learners options for demonstrating what they know,
• Multiple means of engagement - to tap into learners' interests, offer challenges, increase motivation

(Source: CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org)

Although it shares concepts and principles with them all, UDL is different from:

• Assisted technology
• Accomodation of disabilities
• Learning styles
• Multiples intelligences