A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the Neurodiversity Institute at the University of Denver. This workshop took place over two days and featured a great mix of content (i.e., expert presentations on dyslexia and ADHD) as well as information on ways that faculty can access already existing resources on campus (such as the Learning Effectiveness Program and the Office of Teaching and Learning, two programs who contributed so much to the workshop). Faculty from all over DU (humanities, social sciences, STEM, business, etc.) participated, which really made for great discussions as we brainstormed ways to implement what we were learning in our respective courses.
Some basic takeaways:
We have way more students with some type of disability than we think we do. 1 in 4 people in the US have some type of disability.
Making accommodations to students on a case-by-case basis takes up way more bandwidth than redesigning courses with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in mind. UDL includes many things, but key examples include making sure you turn on closed caption support in Zoom and PowerPoint, hi-quality PDF’s that screen readers can easily process, as well as differentiated assessments (offering students the choice of whether to participate in class by serving as a peer note taker vs. making oral presentations), and taking advantage of UDL tools built into Canvas (these can quickly scan through your Canvas course shell and identify accessibility issues, such as pictures that have no description, or PDF’s that are untagged).
Students who receive accommodations are NOT asking for an advantage over their neurotypical peers, they are asking for accommodations in order to be able to fully access course materials and participate in our courses.
UDL makes things better for everyone, not just those students who receive accommodations.
Research indicates that many students entering college do not request accommodations even when they received those accommodations in high school, largely because they do not think that their professors will work with them. Research also indicates that in many cases students who have this perception are correct. I can vouch for this personally, as I have had numerous students thank me for giving them the accommodations that they are guaranteed under federal law (specifically the Americans with Disability Act).
We as faculty have to be better on this, working to ensure that our students know that we will honor their accommodations (again, not really a choice, because federal law). There are lots of ways we can do this, including syllabus statements, explicitly discussing why we value UDL and explaining how we incorporate UDL into our courses, and (I think most importantly) telling students that we are open to feedback on ways to adjust the course so as to make it more accessible. It goes a long ways towards building trust with our students if we can admit that there is no quick fix to prioritizing accessibility in an ableist world, that we are doing the best we can, but we don’t know everything (I know, the horror, the horror!).
My next steps include:
(1) reading Jay Dolmage’s Academic Ableism (University of Michigan Press, 2017)
(2) reworking a few of my assessments to make them more accessible;
(3) hopefully getting on the agenda at a department meeting to discuss what needs my colleagues have in terms of learning more about UDL;
(4) Reflecting on the intersection of UDL and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) work.
A few more helpful links: