Category: Universal Design for Learning

At the time of writing, much of Australia’s population is in lockdown, and debate rages over the merit and safety of Year 12 students returning to face-to-face lessons. Consequently, much thought is being given to lockdowns and learning. However, there are some practical strategies to help with accessible online learning.

In Sydney, much of the related discussion in the media surrounds the safety of both students and teachers. Teachers at all levels, primary, secondary and tertiary education, are impacted by lockdowns. They have faced many challenges – adapting to classes online, and ensuring students have devices and the skills and software to use them. Other issues are reaching students who are not online, supporting students of essential workers in person whilst also teaching online, to name a few.

The experiences of primary and secondary school students are those that make media headlines. But what of university and other tertiary students? Their career preparation requires specific practical experience to develop required skills. How do lockdowns and learning work for them? And how to ensure equity and access for all students when learning turned ‘remote’?

A recent report by Levey et al. explains that teachers of nursing and other healthcare courses found great challenges in ‘pivoting’ to provide all their courses online. This was especially the case for those that require clinical hours and therefore, required virtual simulation programs to be implemented. The authors reported that due to the rush to post their courses online, educators may inadvertently have excluded some students. This was due to them not giving enough consideration to accessibility. The title of the report is,COVID-19 Pandemic: Universal Design Creates Equitable Access.  

Practical Strategies

The authors discuss Universal Design for Learning as a framework that guides educators to overcome this issue. They reference 20 Tips for Teaching an Accessible Online Course, by Burgstahler which includes the following recommendations.

• • use clear, consistent layouts and organization schemes to present content; use descriptive wording for hyperlink text (e.g., “UD video” rather than “click here”)
  • provide concise text descriptions of the content presented within images;
  • use large sans serif fonts on uncluttered pages with plain backgrounds; (d) make it unnecessary for a student to distinguish between colours;
  • caption videos and transcribe audio content, and
  • use digital tools that are accessible to students with disabilities; and
  • provide multiple opportunities for students to learn, such as using a combination of text, video, audio, or image speaking aloud all content presented on slides in synchronous presentations;
  • offer multiple ways for students to communicate and collaborate;
  • provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate what they have learned, such as using different types of test items, portfolios, presentations, single-topic discussions;
  • offer outlines and other scaffolding tools to help students learn. Writing tips include addressing a wide range of language skills (e.g., use plain English, spell out acronyms, define terms, avoid or define jargon), making instructions and expectations clear for activities and discussions, and using examples that are relevant to learners with a wide variety of abilities and interests

There’s more on lockdowns and learning in Return to Online Learning that includes a quick start guide, and Online Learning Technologies and UDL. 

In March 2019, another historic moment for space travel and exploration was scheduled – the first all-women spacewalk, due to take place at the International Space Station. However, days before the scheduled departure, it was discovered that a properly fitting spacesuit was not available for one of the astronauts. Without this essential tool, a tool that prevents astronauts from excessive fatigue and from potential harm being caused to their body, one of the women could not participate in the space operation. This illustrates the UDL principle of optimising access to tools and technology. 

According to a report in National Geographic, the spacesuit debacle was more complicated than just sexism: it raised a very real issue for women in all fields traditionally dominated by men. The tools weren’t initially designed with access to all potential astronauts in mind. A lack of access to the right tools served as a barrier to access for the astronaut, Anne McClain.

Originally spacesuits were designed as one-offs for each individual astronaut. Eventually, NASA required reusable suits. At first, these were based on a modular design in which the different parts, including the arms, legs, and torso, could be swapped out. It was around the same time, in the late 1970s, that the first American women were accepted into the astronaut training program. And it is also when the fit of spacesuits became especially challenging—and the differences between men’s and women’s bodies became an important factor. However, despite this becoming apparent more than four decades earlier, the barrier that Anne McClain faced was still not overcome.

In the last couple of years, redesigns of spacesuits include components that will support both men’s and women’s body sizes offering more comfort to what is an uncomfortable physical experience and allow for the broadest range of motion.

This illustrates that despite having the knowledge and understanding required to participate in a task, without access to the right tools, or the right support when tools are supplied, unnecessary barriers are created. This relates to UDL Checkpoint 4.2.

UDL Checkpoint 4.2: Optimise Access to Tools & Assistive Technologies

CAST explains that providing a learner with a tool is often not enough. We need to provide the support to use the tool effectively. Many learners need help navigating through their environment (both in terms of physical space and the curriculum), and all learners should be given the opportunity to use tools that might help them meet the goal of full participation in the classroom. However, significant numbers of learners with disabilities have to use assistive technologies for navigation, interaction, and composition on a regular basis.

It is critical that instructional technologies and curricula do not impose inadvertent barriers to the use of these assistive technologies. An important design consideration, for example, is to ensure that there are keyboard commands for any mouse action so that learners can use common assistive technologies that depend upon those commands. It is also important, however, to ensure that making a lesson physically accessible does not inadvertently remove its challenge to learning.

Practical Strategies

• • Provide concrete materials/manipulatives for tasks
  • Use scaffolding as tools to guide tasks
  • Provide options to use educational apps and websites
  • Offer Screen reading services
  • Provide access to alternative keyboards
  • Customize overlays for touch screens and keyboards

See more in this latest collection of posts, where illustrations of universal design (the design for ease and accessibility in the community) are shared. The goal to connect these to ways we can consider the design of teaching strategies to ensure access to learning for all students.

In 2018, Coles Supermarkets expanded a trial of their Quiet Hour. Quiet Hour provides a low-sensory shopping experience by making changes in store, such as reducing noise and distractions. These changes are designed to help make a difference to customers who find it challenging to shop in a heightened-sensory environment. We can relate this to Universal Design for Learning. 

Coles partnered with Aspect to develop the program. The aim is to support customers who are, or have family members, on the autism spectrum. During Quiet Hour, the supermarkets’:

• • • Store lighting is reduced
    • Coles Radio is turned down
    • Register and scanner volumes are reduced to the lowest level
    • No trolley collections
    • Roll cages are removed from the shop floor
    • No PA announcements are made except in the case of emergencies
    • Additional team members are available to support customers

This is UDL checkpoint 7.3: Minimise Threats and Distractions

CAST, the home of UDL, explain that one of the most important things an educator can do is to create a safe space for learners. To do this, teachers need to reduce potential threats and distractions in the learning environment. When learners have to focus their attention on having basic needs met or avoiding a negative experience they cannot concentrate on the learning process.

The physical safety of a learning environment is of course necessary. But subtler types of threats and distractions must be attended to as well. What is threatening or potentially distracting depends on learners’ individual needs and background. For example, an English Language Learner might find language experimentation threatening, while some learners might find too much sensory stimulation distracting.

The optimal instructional environment has options to reduce threats and negative distractions. It’s about creating a safe space for everyone in which learning can occur.

 Practical Strategies

• • Creating an accepting and supportive classroom climate
  • Changing up the level of novelty or risk through
  • Including charts, calendars, schedules, visible timers, cues, etc. that can increase the predictability of daily activities and transitions
  • Creating predictability through class routines
  • Alerting and previewing so that learners can anticipate and prepare for changes in activities, schedules, and novel events
  • Providing options that can, in contrast to the above, maximize the unexpected, surprising, or novel in highly routine activities
  • Varying the level of sensory stimulation by providing variation in the presence of background noise or visual stimulation, noise buffers, number of features or items presented at a time
  • Options for the pace of work, length of work sessions, availability of breaks or time-outs, or timing or sequence of activities
  • Considering the social demands required for learning or performance, the perceived level of support and protection and the requirements for public display and evaluation
  • Involving all participants in whole-class discussions 

Connect to Your Practice

How could you enhance the sense of safety and support in your learning environment? Consider one or two ways that could reduce threat or discomfort for your learners. Small changes result in huge outcomes for learners in accessing their learning.

See more in this latest collection of posts, where illustrations of universal design (the design for ease and accessibility in the community) are shared. The goal is to connect these to ways we can design teaching strategies to ensure access to learning for all students.

In this latest collection of posts, I’m sharing illustrations of universal design. My aim is to connect these designs to ways we can consider the design of teaching strategies to ensure access to learning for all students. Twist taps are good design example.

Many of us in Australia take for granted free and quick access to water from a tap, but not everyone can do this due to the way taps are designed. My very precious granny had arthritis in her hands and she sometimes experienced weakness. So turning traditional twist taps was hard at the best of times and not possible at some times.

A small but significant change to the tool needed to do the job was all that was required. Adopting a lever style tap eliminated this access barrier for my granny. Consider then the tools that our students require to access their learning.

This connects to Checkpoint 4.1 of the UDL Framework: Vary Methods for Navigation

CAST explains that learners differ widely in their capacity to navigate their physical environment. Educators must reduce barriers to learning that might occur due to the motor demands of a task. This can be achieved by providing alternative means for our students to respond, choose, and compose.

Practical Strategies

Learners differ widely in their optimal means for navigating through information and activities. To provide equal opportunity for interaction with learning experiences, we, as teachers, must ensure that there are multiple ways for students to navigate and control their learning. Some recommendations from CAST include:

• • Providing alternatives in the lesson requirements. Cater for rate, timing, speed, and range of motor action required to interact with instructional materials, physical manipulatives, and technologies
  • Considering alternatives for physically responding or indicating selections (e.g., alternatives to marking with pen and pencil, alternatives to mouse control)
  •  Offering options for physically interacting with materials by hand, voice, single switch, joystick, keyboard, or adapted keyboard

Connect to Your Practice

Can you think of a student who may benefit from being able to select alternatives for accessing physical materials or technologies? Including options in your lesson design that caters for that student will likely provide better access for some of your other students, too.

Check out the other posts in Lizzie’s UDL File. 

Have you ever signed an important document, skimming over the terms and conditions, not reading the fine print because it is not written in plain English? Or perhaps you fall into the one in a thousand who reads the terms and conditions of each contract you enter? 

A 2014 study revealed that only one in a thousand shoppers accessed license agreements. The researchers looked at the internet browsing behaviour of nearly 50,000 visitors to 90 online software retail companies in a month. They found that accessing it is one step, but of those who do, they read only a small portion.¹ Reading and comprehending the fine print was the real barrier to being informed of contractual obligations. 

Pages and pages of difficult to comprehend text, written in a small font can be off-putting for many consumers. These factors are barriers to many for making sense of transactions they make. But small changes can minimise barriers. 

Small Changes Create Fewer Barriers

While adults may experience this in our daily lives, students may also face similar experiences. As CAST, the founders of UDL explain, classroom materials are often dominated by information in text. However, text can be an inferior format for presenting some concepts and for explicating most processes.

Also, text is a particularly weak form of presentation for learners who have text or language-related disabilities. Providing alternatives—especially illustrations, simulations, images or interactive graphics—can make the information in a text more comprehensible for any learner and accessible for some who would find it completely inaccessible in text.

In May this year, Bankwest, a division of the Commonwealth Bank in Australia, released their Terms and Conditions in illustrated format. The bank partnered with the University of Western Australia to reinvent the way their fine print is presented. They claim it as a banking ‘first’ in Australia.

The goal was to eliminate confusing fine print and simplify the product schedule to make it easier for customers to understand what they need to know about certain account products and how they work.

Practical Strategies

This is a great example from everyday life that educators can take back to their learning spaces. CAST recommends:

• • Presenting key concepts in one form of symbolic representation. For example, an expository text or a math equation with an alternative form. For example, an illustration, dance/movement, diagram, table, model, video, comic strip, storyboard, photograph, animation, physical or virtual manipulative.
  • Making explicit links between information provided in texts and any accompanying representation of that information in illustrations, equations, charts, or diagrams.

For further posts on everyday examples illustrating lessons for educators in reducing barriers to learning see the latest posts here.

¹Bakos, Y., Marotta-Wurgler, F., & Trossen, D. (2014). Does Anyone Read the Fine Print? Consumer Attention to Standard-Form Contracts. The Journal of Legal Studies, 43(1), 1-35. doi:10.1086/674424

Over one billion hours of video are watched daily, according to YouTube. Whether scrolling your socials or watching the television at the medical clinic, it’s hard to avoid the audiovisual onslaught. But what if you are hearing impaired? What if you are in public? What if your family or housemates don’t want to overhear the latest funny cats video?

Thanks to the wonder of captions, scrolling social media on public transport or in the company of others doesn’t have to be a shared event. Captions are written support for understanding audio and come in three formats: open, closed or real time. They are vital to providing broad access to television, cinema movies, online and other audiovisual content.

Types of Captions

The text of open captions are embedded in a video and can’t be switched on or off. Closed captions, denoted by the CC symbol on the video player, can be toggled on and off. The text is pre-written and saved as a file attached to the video file. Real-time captions transcribe audio of live events verbatim. The captions are created as it happens during a live event.

Benefits

Initially designed for hearing-impaired audiences, captioning offers access to content for a much broader audience than originally intended. For students with learning difficulties, captions may assist learning by reinforcing in writing what the user is watching and hearing on the video. Another way captions break barriers to accessing learning is by supporting learners who have English as a second language or dialect. Captions may be supplied in multiple languages. This means learners can access the text in their native language and hear it in English. Or they have the English text matching the spoken word.

Not only does captioning allow audio-free access to audiovisual content but some captioning systems allow for searching text. This feature provides deeper accessibility. The user, or in education, the student or teacher, has the power to search the caption text to locate a particular word or point in the video.

Link to the UDL Framework

Captioning relates to Checkpoint 1.2, Offer Alternatives for Auditory Information, in the Universal Design for Learning Framework. We can break barriers to learning by sharing everyday examples of UDL, which can occur in small and familiar ways.

Read our other article relating UDL to everyday life and pop-culture here.

Introducing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into education settings is often met with a murmur of, “Oh no, something else that has to be done.” School teachers, early childhood educators and university academics all carry an extraordinary load. Taking on something new can feel burdensome, at times. One strategy to help this be less so, is to illustrate concepts of UDL through real-world examples.

This post, and a collection of future posts, will draw attention to principles of UDL in everyday life and pop culture.  And where better to start than with the Sesame Street?

Sesame Street and UDL

Features of Sesame Street relate to several the UDL checkpoints. This post explores Sesame Street and UDL Checkpoint 7.2, Engagement through optimising relevance, value, and authenticity.

For more than 50 years, Sesame Street has been entertaining children with an educational focus. Throughout its long history, it constantly sought to represent all people, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Just as UDL aims to make education inclusive and accessible, so too does Sesame Street.

Sesame Street creates its program to be appropriate for different racial, cultural and ethnic groups. Teaching about racial difference is one example, through its multi-coloured Muppets, and then more explicitly with the introduction of black characters.

Cultural responsiveness is shown through different focal points for different countries. Kami, a Muppet in the South African series, is HIV positive. His representation aims to support people to recognise themselves or promote understanding of others. Kami’s friends make explicit that HIV cannot be spread by touch or by being friends with someone who is HIV positive.

In the Nigerian series, the focus moves to religious and ethnic diversity. Diverse religious iconography, food, names and clothing have all been included to promote cultural responsiveness and relevance.

Creating a range of Muppets with diverse characteristics, such as Julia, being on the autism spectrum, characters having mixed race relationships, and, for example, characters with physical or neurological disabilities promotes personalisation and contextualisation, ensuring the lessons learnt through Sesame Street are relevant and valuable to its viewers.

Relating strongly to Checkpoint 7.2 of the UDL guidelines, these features of the Sesame Street characters help optimise relevance and authenticity. Through making its characters representative of the broader community, Sesame Street increases accessibility through diversity and inclusion – a great illustration for consideration in our formal education contexts.

See more of Lizzie’s posts on UDL for specific teaching and learning strategies. 

Visit the Universal Design for Learning section of this website for more information on UDL.