UDL in Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter serves as an introduction to the volume. It situates universal design for learning (UDL) historically as a framework and examines how it has come to be explored and embraced by higher education. The chapter first reviews the literature on implementation and use of UDL in post-secondary education, and does so in a way that will avoid all other authors in the volume having to revisit the same basic sources. The second section of the chapter uses the phenomenological data amassed by the author in terms of lived experience as a UDL consultant interacting with various post-secondary institutions—both domestically and internationally—to identify key areas that are likely to become crucial in the coming years. Explicit connections are made to chapters that appear further in the volume and develop some of the themes raised in this introductory chapter. The third and final section of chapter examines the global landscape and discusses differences that may exist in relation to UDL implementation between Global North and Global South.