Initiatives

CAST's major initiatives include the research and development of educational models and tools, applied research in classrooms, and professional development for educators. Through these initiatives, CAST investigates the needs of diverse learners and implements UDL approaches in a variety of real-life contexts. To make an impact in education nationwide, CAST also disseminates information about UDL through public and professional channels and collaborates with publishers, universities, and other national organizations. CAST's initiatives are funded with support from government agencies, foundations, corporations, other not-for-profit organizations, and individual donors.

Current initiatives include:

Literacy by Design: Creating Universally Designed Reading Environments for Students with Cognitive Disabilities
Project Dates: 2003-2005
In a three-year OSEP-funded project, CAST and the Center for Community Inclusion at the University of Maine are combining their expertise to investigate the effectiveness of CAST's Thinking Reader instructional framework in fostering beginning reading skills in children with significant cognitive disabilities.

Reading to Learn: Investigating General and Domain-Specific Supports in a Technology Rich Environment with Diverse Readers Learning from Informational Text
Project Dates: 2002-2005
Funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Educational Sciences, this three-year research project is investigating struggling and typically achieving fourth grade students’ comprehension and learning from informational text in hypertext and Web environments vs. narrative text within a supported, digital learning environment.

Story Mapper
Project Dates: 2004
Funding from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation is enabling CAST to develop a software module aimed at improving text comprehension in students with learning differences by supporting them in mapping out a story's structure and plot development visually.

Strategy Tutor
Project Dates: 2003-2005
With funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, CAST is developing Strategy Tutor, a Web-based strategy instruction program that supports students with diverse learning needs in acquiring the comprehension skills they need to read and learn from educational websites. Strategy Tutor serves as a Web portal for students when they connect to the Internet, transforming Web pages into supported reading environments.

Study of Eye Movements during Reading of Feature-Enriched Text
Project Dates: 2003-2005
With funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, CAST is using eye movement technology to conduct research that promises to contribute to the knowledge base on normal and atypical reading development as well as instructional approaches that support reading.

Thinking Writer for Science: A Technology Based Instructional Approach for Writing to Support Students with Disabilities
Project Dates: 2003-2005
With major funding from the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs, CAST is investigating the potential of its Science Writer software prototype to support middle and high school students, including those with learning disabilities, in the process of writing a science report. The project builds on research showing that many students with disabilities benefit from explicit writing strategy instruction.

CAST eReader
Project Dates: 1997-2004
Since its release in 1999, CAST eReader™ has supported the literacy development of thousands of children and adults with special needs, including physical and sensory disabilities and limited English language skills, by adding spoken voice and synchronized highlighting to all forms of electronic text. In 2004, CAST signed a five-year agreement with Aequus Technologies to advance the development and commercialization of eReader, with the goals of reaching a wider audience and assisting educators in meeting the mandates of new special education legislation.

National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (NCAC)
Project Dates: 1999-2004
In a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Programs (OSEP), CAST has established a National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum to provide a vision of how new curricula, teaching practices, and policies can be woven together to create practical approaches for access to the general curriculum by students with disabilities. CAST's partners in this initiative are the Harvard University Children's Initiative and Harvard Law School, Boston College School of Education, the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), and the Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER).

National Consortium on Universal Design for Learning
Project Dates: Ongoing
In 1999, CAST launched the National Consortium on Universal Design for Learning, a community of educators and other professionals dedicated to developing systemic practice models that better serve the educational needs of all students, including those with disabilities. The principles of Universal Design for Learning are central to the mission of the National Consortium.

The Model Classroom Project: Transforming Curricula and Teaching through Universal Design for Learning
Project Dates: 2002-2004
This three-year initiative is creating and evaluating the first comprehensive working models of classrooms that incorporate the principles of Universal Design for Learning into instructional materials and approaches in each subject area of the curriculum.

Strategic Learning Editions: Embedding Flexible Supports for Learning Comprehension Strategies in Digital Text
Project Dates: 2001-2004
Building on research conducted in the recently concluded Engaging the Text project, this three-year OSEP-funded study is developing prototype "Strategic Learning Editions:" interactive, digital versions of short stories, novels, and informational Web pages with embedded reading strategy supports for middle school students with learning disabilities.

Thinking Reader for English Language Learners
Project dates: 2003-2004
Extending the learning supports offered by the CAST Folktales Universal Learning Edition, CAST is adding a rich array of bilingual and other reading comprehension supports to this digital collection of multicultural folktales to create an instructional framework for native Spanish-speaking students. Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the approach will be piloted in California classrooms.

Thinking Reader for the Deaf
Project Dates: 2002-2004
Responding to research showing that deaf students are better able to develop reading and writing skills when a clear relationship between printed text and sign language has been established, CAST, in partnership with the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet University, is creating a Thinking Reader for the Deaf. This innovative provides a supported, dual language environment (American Sign Language and English) to foster reading comprehension skills in students with hearing impairments.

Trekking the Web: Internet Inquiry in a Supported Learning Environment for Students with Disabilities
Project Dates: 2001-2004
The focus of this three-year OSEP-funded research study is to better understand the Internet inquiry processes of middle school students with and without learning disabilities and to contribute to the development of software tools and instructional strategies that support students' Internet learning.

UDL Guidelines
Project Dates: 2001-2004
The landmark IDEA amendments of 1997 stipulate that students with disabilities are entitled to access, participation, and progress within the general education curriculum. Unfortunately, traditional “one size fits all” approaches to curriculum and instruction often fail to meet the instructional needs of students with disabilities. To address this issue, CAST is developing guidelines to assist curriculum designers and publishers in using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to create educational methods and materials that are designed, from the outset, to meet the needs of the full spectrum of students in typical American classrooms.

Universal Design and Assessment
Project Dates: Ongoing
In a variety of initiatives, CAST is exploring the role of digital technologies and Universal Design for Learning in designing accessible assessments that fairly and accurately measure students with disabilities’ skills and knowledge.

Completed initiatives include:

Beyond Assistive Technology: Policy, Curriculum, and Technology for Inclusion
Project Dates: 1995-1998
This collaborative research project with the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire focused on the efficacy of a technology-based literacy curriculum as an inclusive educational tool for children with disabilities.

CAST Folktales Universal Learning Edition
Project Dates: 2003
With funding from the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, CAST has developed the CAST Folktales Universal Learning Edition-a digital collection of folktales and accompanying informational texts with embedded comprehension supports-to demonstrate the power of CAST's ULE technology to publishers and to engage their participation in developing similar products.

Engaging the Text: Reciprocal Teaching and Questioning Strategies in a Scaffolded Learning Environment
Combining the Reciprocal Teaching Method, CAST's eReader software, and voice recognition technology, this research project is designing a new instructional approach to improve reading comprehension in middle-school students with learning disabilities.

eTrekker: A Web Learning and Productivity Software Tool
This research and development project is creating a Web-based learning and productivity software tool that will help students with learning disabilities plan, search, analyze, read, organize and present information from the Web. Current activities include a three-year research study, Trekking the Web, funded by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs.

Family and Community Literacy
Project Dates: 1996-1999
Housed in five demonstration sites nationwide, this project used computer technology, universally designed software, and a unique model of training parents and teachers to provide a "literacy head start" for at-risk children and their parents.

The Strategic Reader: Textbooks Today, Web Tomorrow
Project Dates: 1998-2000
To support higher level reading comprehension in high school students with learning disabilities, this OSEP-funded research project refined and developed the CAST eReader as a strategic reading tool, provided text mark-up guidelines for publishers of digital textbooks, and created instructional techniques for the use of the resulting tool and enhanced content.

Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning
Project Dates: 1998-2002
Published in 2002 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), CAST's book Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning, provides educators with a foundation in the concepts and practical applications of Universal Design for Learning.

The Thinking Reader Project: A Technology-Based Instructional Approach to Support Beginning Reading in Children with Mental Retardation
Project Dates: 2001-2003
With support from the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation, this project created an interactive Web-based learning environment, using three digital picture book exemplars, to support the development of beginning reading skills and comprehension strategies in students with mental retardation.

Understanding Science Through Captioning
Project Dates: 1994-1997
Using video captioning software, CAST researchers developed and tested an innovative curriculum to enhance achievement in science for students who are deaf or hearing impaired.

Universal Learning Center
Project Dates: 1998-2000
CAST launched the Universal Learning Center (ulc.cast.org), a new Web-based resource, with the goal of making accessible, digital learning materials widely available to teachers and their students, and to provide instruction on how these versatile and flexible materials may be used effectively to meet a wide range of student learning needs.