Curriculum Access for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities: The Promise of UDL

Written by Richard M. Jackson

Director of Practice and CAST's Liaison to Boston College for the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum

Edited by Valerie Hendricks

Note: This paper has been updated. Access the 2011 version at the Disability-Specific Resources page.

This article is also available in Word and PDF formats.

Acknowledgements

When one completes a writing project of this size and effort, there are many to recognize and thank. Foremost is CAST's Valerie Hendricks, whose editing skills remain unparalleled. Valerie's critical review, suggested reorganizations, and detailed edits in the final stages of the writing proved enormously helpful, contributing greatly to the overall quality of the work. I am also indebted to Kelly Harper and Lisa White, OSEP-supported research assistants based at Boston College, for their careful and extensive library research and literature summaries. Additionally, I want to recognize and thank other Boston College research assistants who helped with earlier editing and reference checking. They include Xiaoxia Chen, Jennifer Hawthorne and Randall Lahann. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to Chuck Hitchcock, NCAC's project director at CAST, and David Rose, NCAC's principal investigator at CAST, for their patience, encouragement, and commitment in seeing this project through to completion.

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Overview
• 1. What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)?
• 2. What are low-incidence disabilities?
• 3. Why are schools and communities particularly challenged in serving students with low-incidence disabilities?
• 4. What are the needs of students with low-incidence disabilities?
• 5. What curricula and instructional practices are currently use with students with low-incidence disabilities?
• 6. What planning models are in use for students with low-incidence disabilities?
• 7. How can IEPs ensure greater access to the general curriculum for students with low-incidence disabilities?
• 8. What approaches exist for enabling students with low-incidence disabilities to participate in state- and district-level assessment systems?
• 9. How can the UDL framework increase access to the general curriculum for students with low-incidence disabilities?
• References
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Appendix E
• Appendix F
• Appendix G
• Appendix H
• Appendix I

Citation

Cite this report as follows:

Jackson, R. (2005). Curriculum Access for Students with Low-Incidence Disabilities: The Promise of Universal Design for Learning. Wakefield, MA: National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum. Retrieved [insert date] from http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/promise_of_udl