Imagine a teacher who has spent hours preparing an engaging, standards-aligned lesson. The objectives are clear, the materials are ready, and the activities are designed to challenge students.
Then comes another step: reviewing accommodations, identifying necessary modifications, preparing additional materials, and determining how to support students whose needs were not fully considered during the initial planning process.
For many educators, this is a familiar reality.
But what if we approached instructional design differently?
What if accessibility and individual student needs were part of the planning process from the very beginning, rather than considerations added afterward?
That question challenges us to move beyond viewing accommodations primarily as compliance responsibilities and toward recognizing inclusive instructional design as a fundamental component of effective teaching.
Compliance Is Essential, but It Should Not Be the Finish Line
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act establish important protections for students with disabilities. These requirements help ensure that eligible students receive the services, accommodations, and supports necessary to access educational opportunities.
Meeting these obligations is not optional. It is essential.
However, fulfilling a legal requirement and creating a genuinely accessible learning experience are not always the same thing.
An accommodation may be documented in an individualized education program (IEP) or Section 504 plan, but its instructional value depends on how meaningfully it is implemented.
Consider a student who requires text-to-speech support. Providing access to the technology fulfills an important responsibility. Ensuring that instructional materials are compatible with that technology, that the student knows how to use it, and that it supports meaningful participation in learning requires intentional instructional design.
The distinction is not between compliance and instruction.
It is between treating compliance as the destination and recognizing it as the foundation for meaningful access.
What Research Tells Us About Inclusive Instructional Design
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides a useful framework for rethinking how we approach learner variability.
Developed by CAST, UDL encourages educators to anticipate barriers to learning and proactively design flexible instructional experiences.
The updated CAST UDL Guidelines 3.0 (2024) emphasize three interconnected principles:
- Multiple Means of Engagement: Supporting different ways students connect with, participate in, and sustain motivation for learning.
- Multiple Means of Representation: Providing accessible ways for students to encounter and understand information.
- Multiple Means of Action and Expression: Offering appropriate options for students to interact with learning and demonstrate understanding.
Rather than assuming a single instructional approach will work for everyone, UDL encourages educators to recognize learner variability as an expected part of every classroom.
Research also reminds us that effective implementation requires more than adopting a framework.
In a 2024 systematic literature review published in Educational Psychology Review, Zhang and colleagues examined 32 peer-reviewed studies involving UDL implementation in preK–12 educational settings.
The researchers identified challenges related to inconsistent implementation, unclear connections between UDL principles and instructional practices, and limited theoretical guidance.
These findings reinforce an important consideration: inclusive instruction depends not simply on adopting a framework, but on how thoughtfully that framework is translated into classroom practice.
From Retrofitting to Designing With Intention
Consider a classroom preparing to analyze a grade-level informational text.
A traditional approach might involve selecting the reading, developing comprehension questions, and then determining which students need additional support.
A more proactive approach begins by anticipating learner variability.
The teacher might provide accessible digital text, intentionally introduce essential vocabulary, incorporate visual representations of complex concepts, and offer structured opportunities for discussion.
These supports can benefit a wide range of students.
A multilingual learner may benefit from vocabulary development and opportunities to connect new concepts with existing linguistic knowledge.
A student with dyslexia may require accessible text formats or assistive technology.
A student who struggles with executive functioning may benefit from clearly sequenced instructions and organizational support.
A student demonstrating advanced understanding may need opportunities for deeper analysis and application.
Importantly, proactively designed supports do not replace individualized accommodations required by an IEP or Section 504 plan. Those supports must still be provided according to each student’s documented needs.
The goal is not to eliminate individualization.
It is to create an instructional foundation that makes individualization more effective and manageable.
Inclusion Should Not Mean More Work for Teachers
One of the greatest challenges in education is the growing expectation that teachers continuously adapt instruction while managing increasingly complex responsibilities.
Educators are expected to deliver rigorous curriculum, monitor progress, implement accommodations, support language development, address learning differences, and respond to students’ social and emotional needs.
Too often, the systems supporting those responsibilities remain disconnected.
Teachers may have to move between curriculum platforms, student information systems, accommodation documents, assessment tools, and instructional resources simply to prepare a single lesson.
This raises an important question for educational leaders and technology developers:
Are we designing systems that support inclusive instruction, or are we asking teachers to compensate for systems that do not?
High-quality instructional materials should provide a strong foundation for learning. But educators also need practical ways to adapt those materials without sacrificing instructional rigor or spending hours recreating resources.
Technology can play a valuable role when it helps educators identify relevant supports, adapt materials, maintain standards alignment, and respond to individual learning needs.
The purpose should not be to automate professional judgment.
It should be to make that judgment easier to apply.
Accessibility Is an Instructional Responsibility
Inclusive instructional design is not solely the responsibility of special education teachers.
It requires collaboration among general education teachers, special educators, multilingual learner specialists, instructional coaches, curriculum leaders, and administrators.
It also requires recognizing that students cannot be understood through a single label.
A student with an IEP may also be multilingual. A student receiving reading intervention may demonstrate exceptional strengths in mathematics. A student who needs significant support in one area may be ready for advanced work in another.
Effective instruction must account for these overlapping strengths and needs.
That means moving beyond a checklist mentality toward a more comprehensive understanding of the learner.
It means asking not only whether an accommodation was provided, but whether the student could meaningfully access, participate in, and demonstrate learning.
And it means designing instructional environments where accessibility is expected rather than exceptional.
Building Access Into the Future of Education
At RevolutionEd, we believe individual student needs and accommodations should be integral to instructional planning, not additional tasks educators must navigate after a lesson is complete.
Our approach emphasizes supporting teachers as they design standards-aligned learning experiences responsive to the students they serve.
But the larger responsibility extends beyond any individual platform.
As educators, leaders, and innovators, we must continue examining whether our instructional practices and systems reflect what we know about learner variability.
Compliance establishes essential protections.
Thoughtful instructional design helps translate those protections into meaningful learning experiences.
The goal is not simply to ensure students receive the accommodations they are entitled to. It is to create learning environments where every student has a genuine opportunity to participate, grow, and succeed.
Because reaching every learner should never be an afterthought.
References
CAST. (2024). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0. https://udlguidelines.cast.org/
U.S. Department of Education. (2025). Dear colleague letter on building and sustaining inclusive educational practices. https://sites.ed.gov/idea/idea-files/dear-colleague-letter-on-building-and-sustaining-inclusive-educational-practices-january-16-2025/
Zhang, L., Carter, R. A., Jr., Greene, J. A., & Bernacki, M. L. (2024). Unraveling challenges with the implementation of Universal Design for Learning: A systematic literature review. Educational Psychology Review, 36, Article 35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09860-7
By Dr. Jen Walczak
Director of Education Initiatives & Operations | RevolutionEd
