Why is Accessibility & Universal Design for Learning (UDL) important?

From Educause's website:

Universal design for learning (UDL) and digital accessibility both seek to increase learning access and reduce barriers for students. As such, their primary goals are compatible and are widely acknowledged as crucial to ensuring equity in education.

UDL is a teaching and course-development framework that gives all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL emphasizes flexible approaches to instruction and content presentation, which make it easier for students to customize and adjust content to suit their individual learning needs.

Digital accessibility focuses on learners who have particular needs related to sensory, physical, and/or cognitive impairments. This often involves coupling content presentations with accommodations to make them accessible to all users—for example, providing text versions of image-based content, which allows a screen reader to interpret that content for students with visual impairments.

This site is intended to assist faculty with designing more accessible Canvas course sites and course materials. Please click on Modules on the left hand side to get started, or select one of the links below.

accessibility word cloud

Accessibility Accommodations

Accessibility Examples

Page Styling

What is AccessChecker?

Helpful Web Resources

If you have any questions about the resources provided here, please contact the Academic Technology Center at atc-ttl@wpi.edu or the Office of Accessibility Services at accessibilityservices@wpi.edu.