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Learn About
Universal
Design in
Education

Why UDE and not UDL?

Students involved in postsecondary education must successfully perform hundreds of different types of tasks during a study term. These tasks range from successfully registering for courses, paying for courses, waking before morning classes, finding sufficient nutrition to be mentally engaged during classes, getting to classes, physically managing course books, using computers, accessing materials, completing assignments, taking tests etc. Successfully navigating through a day, much less a term, of educational activities requires access to physical spaces and buildings, information systems, as well as courses, services and curriculum.

While successful learning of knowledge and skills is the clear goal, successful management of the entire educational experience is the demand. Optimal universal design in postsecondary education revolves around creating better designs for all areas of activity in which a student participates. Difficulty in accessing any one of these hundreds of activities can throw a students education in jeopardy.

Universal Design in Learning might be the best description of interventions specific to course and curriculum. The overall need for universal design in postsecondary education is broader than direct learning activities, however. Thus, a broader term was preferred. We chose Universal Design in Education (UDE) as the most representative terms to describe the scope of UD addressed by the ACCESS-ed Project.

It took me several years of struggling with the heavy door to my building, sometimes having to wait until a person stronger came along, to realize that the door was an accessibility problem, not only for me, but for others as well. And I did not notice, until one of my students pointed it out, that the lack of signs that could be read from a distance at my university forced people with mobility impairments to expend a lot of energy unnecessarily, searching for rooms and offices. Although I have encountered this difficulty myself on days when walking was exhausting to me, I interpreted it, automatically, as a problem arising from my illness (as I did with the door), rather than as a problem arising from the built environment having been created for too narrow a range of people and situations.

Susan Wendell, author of
The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability