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NCAC: What is UDL?: Access, Participation, and Progress in the General Curriculum: The Changing Face of Curriculum

The Changing Face of Curriculum

Since the inception of IDEA in 1975, the challenges facing disability educators have progressed from the most basic concerns of access to buildings and classrooms to concerns of equal participation and progress towards high standards of excellence. This progress has been spurred by IDEA’s progressive language and amendments reflecting a clear monitoring of the changing landscape in schools for students with disabilities.

Although IDEA in its initial form did not specify students’ rights to access, participation, and progress in the general curriculum, hindsight shows the appropriateness of this language as an ultimate goal. When IDEA was initiated, the general curriculum itself created barriers for students with disabilities. Its fixed nature, born of its firm print-based foundation, reflected the underlying "one size fits all" assumption. This precluded participation by students with varied learning needs and led to the development of the separate, special curriculum. This was highly individualized but lacked the overarching accountability for students’ progress.

The later mandate for access, participation, and progress in the general curriculum led to extensive development of modifications and alternatives, as well as assistive technologies to support students with disabilities. This work reflected a shift from a "one size fits all" to "one size fits most" assumption. This shift opened the door for changes in the curriculum and was a crucial step towards universal design. However, retrofitting a still-rigid curriculum to meet diverse learning needs proved costly and ultimately ineffective.

The National Center for Accessing the General Curriculum supports a new underlying assumption for curriculum design, namely "each learner needs his or her own size." While this may seem radical, this notion is old hat to clothing manufacturers, designers of car seats, and makers of fitness equipment. Resting on this new assumption, UDL offers design principles, technology tools, and implementation strategies for creating one curriculum that is sufficiently flexible to reach all students. Clear goals, flexible methods and materials, and embedded assessments make it possible for students with disabilities to truly access, participate, and progress in the general curriculum.

Each stage of curriculum development has contributed significantly to the knowledge base and tool set that made it possible to conceive and begin to implement UDL. The special curriculum contributed in-depth knowledge of student characteristics and the widely varied techniques and tools needed to reach all students. The mainstream curriculum contributed the viewpoint that the curriculum itself needed to be adjusted, and the technologies and tools to make these adjustments. Collectively, these insights and techniques form the substance of the flexibility to be embedded in UDL curriculum.