UDL Resources DL

Welcome to the week on UDL and assistive technology.

At your Module Briefing we will compete in Quizlet Live using a study deck on UDL principles. Join Here.

Several US Federal laws address the issues of assistive technology for K-12 students, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), section 504 of the Rehabilitation amendments, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). They can be summarized as follows:

Assistive Technology MUST BE CONSIDERED in the Individual Education Plan (IEP) of all learners identified with special needs.

So basically the law does not require the use of assistive technology, but it requires identified students be assessed (by the school team) for its need. It requires teachers just like you, who join PPT teams to help decide how best to teach students needing some assistance, to consider all the possible assistive tech options out there that could help students learn.

visually impaired girl using cane at a curb cut

Most would think that using technology for assistive purposes is just for identified special ed students. But it is not!  There is a different philosophy called Universal Design of Learning (UDL) to consider. In this framework, educational technologies can assist regular education students just as they do special needs students. Just as this curb cut helps people in wheel chairs, but also helps YOU when you are riding a bike, or dragging along a suit case, tools used to help students listen and see better, can help all your regular ed students too. So even students who just need a little help or even just increased convenience can benefit when you wisely integrate technology into your classroom activities.

The framework for considering how assistive technology might be wisely used to help all students is Universal Design for Learning (or UDL).

3 main UDL principles

As detailed in the National Center for UDL website, the 3 main principles of UDL are

  • provide multiple means of Engagement
  • provide multiple means of Representation of content (and presentation)
  • provide multiple means of Action and Expression (in class and for all assignments)

Remember, these principles may be needed by some students, but likely they can benefit all students. Close captioning, also known as same-language subtitles, is a good example as many study suggest nearly all learners can benefit from them at some time (Gernsbach 2015) So why not just do it for all students? Right?

Reference:

Gernsbacher, M. (2015). Video Captions Benefit Everyone. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2, 195-202.

Using Accessible Websites

There are efforts to encourage all websites to do things to enable all learners/users to be able to acquire understandable content from the web. ARIA is one such effort as is the government’s requirement that at least public government sites be compliant with 508 standards. There are efforts for products to voluntarily adhere to standards, VPAT. We will check some your favorite sites for compliance as part of this module’s activities.

Here are links to the demonstration of multiple presentation modes:

Here are the links for the 508 Compliance check lab component:

Tools to support the Group Challenge Lab assignment:

Enduring Understanding- Student Learning Outcome from this module

This module intends to prepare teachers for ISTE Standard for Educators 5a that states: Use technology to create, adapt and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs.