What is Universal Instructional Design (UID)?
Written by: Anne Marie Armstrong Universal Instructional Design applies an architectural concept (universal design) to the design of instructional presentations, strategies, and assessments. Architects found the ramps used to make businesses wheel chair accessible were also used by individuals not in wheel chairs (e.g., older individuals, mothers pushing strollers). Thanks to this serendipitous discovery, many architects began incorporating the concept of universal design, i.e., designing usable spaces for all. Universal instructional design is an effort to provide instruction and evaluation that includes all students and instructors. It implies a design of instructional materials and activities that allows learning goals to be attainable by individuals with wide differences in their abilities to see, hear, speak, move, read, write, understand English, attend, organize, engage, and remember. It allows content presentation using a variety of modes. It is an instructional design concept
