Additional Reading

Websites

The UDL Guidelines

This recently created website provides comprehensive descriptions of each principle, guideline, and checkpoint. It also has a link library to research evidence supporting each UDL principle.

IRIS | UDL : Creating a Learning Environment that Challenges and Engages All Students (Vanderbilt University)

The IRIS Center’s online training module on UDL provides a sequential, step-by-step introduction to UDL, designed for preK-12 teachers, but with a specific section for adult learning. By contrasting UDL pedagogy with “traditional” pedagogy, this training module illuminates the ways that instructors at all levels can eliminate barriers to learning.

UDL on Campus: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education

This website provides specific resources for higher education professionals, including instructors, to help increase accessibility. It highlights higher education-specific practices and resources, including specific examples from classrooms, in order to help colleges and universities provide the benefits of UDL to their students.

ACCESS to Post Secondary Learning through UDL (Colorado State University)

This website provides specific training on how to use common software packages and technologies to increase accessibility. It includes tutorials on the Microsoft Office Suite and Adobe PDF software, as well as guidelines for making websites and multimedia more user-friendly. It also has links to “quick-tips” documents for higher-education instructors who may benefit from content tailored specifically to them.

Books

Design and Deliver: Planning and Teaching Using Universal Design for Learning

This book provides an excellent exposition of most aspects of UDL. The author makes meaningful connections between general pedagogical research and UDL, connecting the bones of UDL to some useful strategies that teachers can implement. The examples are accessible and would be easily understood by most readers.The first section of the book provides an introduction to UDL by explaining the neuroscience behind it, with a definition of important terms. The author also seeks to dispel some of the myths about UDL and distinguish it from other similar frameworks. The second section of the book dives deep into each principle of UDL, with close explanations and examples of each UDL checkpoint. Finally, the third section focuses on practical suggestions for teachers seeking to implement UDL in their classrooms

Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice

This book provides a useful general overview of UDL, with helpful supplemental links to online videos from researchers and practitioners who are well versed in UDL. As such, it may be considered the authoritative work on Universal Design, comprehensive and generally written to be accessible in itself. The key focus is making learning environments, including their curricula, accessible through use of the three key principles of UDL, which are broken down into guidelines and checkpoints and spread across the four design elements of goals, methods, materials, and assessments.