ADCET Webinar: UDL in Higher Education Campus Implementation Criteria (CIC) Roadmap

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Many universities have pockets of great Universal Design for Learning (UDL) practice. A lecturer redesigns their assessment, a learning design team builds more flexible units, a faculty runs a pilot. But how do you move from good work in individual courses to UDL being part of how the whole institution thinks, plans and makes decisions?

That's the question behind the UDL Campus Implementation Criteria (UDL-CIC), a new framework designed for higher education, supported by CAST. It gives institutions a practical roadmap for campus-wide UDL implementation, looking at four areas: culture and environment, teaching and learning, leadership and management, and professional learning. For each area it describes what implementation looks like as you progress, from early exploration through to lasting change in systems and culture.

In this interactive session, Dr Anne Ristow and Dr Natsuko Takemae, who led the development of the criteria, along with Luis Pérez from CAST, walked through the roadmap. Rather than just presenting the roadmap, they used a live coaching approach. Participants followed a worked example together and drafted their own plan.

Facilitator

Elizabeth Hitches research interests lie in inclusive education at a national and international level, as well as equity, achievement, and wellbeing for students with disability, chronic health conditions and/or accessibility requirements. Her research is currently exploring academic stress in higher education, and how this can be reduced in inclusive and accessible ways through a UDL lens. She is also a sessional academic teaching in inclusive education across various universities, and a teacher of research methods at the UQ.

Presenters

Dr. Anne Ristow is Department Chair, Associate Professor, and Program Manager of Exceptional Student Education at State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota. Her work centers on advancing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in higher education and preparing future educators to design inclusive, accessible learning experiences for diverse learners. She leads the integration of UDL across teacher preparation programs, instructional practice, and campus-wide initiatives, bridging research and practice to strengthen educator effectiveness and student engagement. A Fulbright Scholar and qualitative researcher, Dr. Ristow brings an equity-centered, international perspective to reimagining learning environments that recognize learner variability and empower pre-service educators to support every learner.

Dr. Natsuko Takemae is an Associate Professor in the Department of Special Education and Interventions at Central Connecticut State University. She earned a PhD in Special Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In the public schools, she worked with students with and without identified disabilities in the general education classroom at high school. She works with pre-service and in-service teachers as well as school professionals across P-12 settings. She also works with local, state, national, and international community agencies to strengthen school-community partnerships and building thriving educational communities with UDL, collaboration, and technology application. She is the recipient of the 2021 Online Teaching Award and the 2026 Excellence in Teaching Semi-Finalist at Central Connecticut State University.

As the Senior Director of Disability & Accessibility for CAST, Luis Perez promotes the creation, delivery and use of high-quality accessible educational materials and technologies to support learning opportunities for learners. He is embedded with the Postsecondary and Workforce Development group at CAST, and in this role works to increase access to middle- and high-income careers for everyone. Luis is also a co-host of the CAST podcast, The Learning Experience, with new episodes launching monthly. His perspective is informed by his own experiences as a user of assistive technology. Luis was recognized with a 2020 ISTE Making It Happen award and he is the author of Dive into UDL (with Kendra Grant; ISTE, 2018) and Learning on the Go (CAST, 2018). He currently serves as a Workplace and Assistive Technology strand advisor for the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA).

(October 2026)

ADCET is hosted by the University of Tasmania