Sample Presentations
Sheryl Burgstahler
Founder and Director (retired 2024):
Center for Universal Design in Education
Currently: Adjunct faculty, University of Washington and City University of New York; author, presenter, and consultant
sherylburgstahler@outlook.com
20 Tips for Making Online Learning Opportunities Accessible to Students with Disabilities
Audience: Instructors and designers of online courses
Description: Many online teaching tools and practices inadvertently make opportunities inaccessible to students with certain types of disabilities. Learn about potential barriers to learning opportunities, and how instructional practices, that are often simple for instructors to implement, can ensure that a course is welcoming and accessible to all students.
Example of presentation: 20 Tips for Instructors About Making Online Learning Courses Accessible
Universal Design of Online Learning Programs
Audiences: Online learning program administrators
Description: Learn how universal design principles, guidelines, and performance indicators can be applied to policies and practices of online learning programs in order to assure that courses are accessible to all students, including those with disabilities.
Making Student Services Accessible to All Students Through the Application of Universal Design
Audiences: Precollege and postsecondary student service staff and administrators
Description: Learn barriers people with disabilities face in pursuing academic studies and careers, and how universal design strategies can make career services, tutoring/learning centers, registration offices, housing and food services, and other student services accessible to all students.
Assistive Technology, Universal Design, and the Digital Divides
Audience: Information technology support staff
Description: Learn how the inaccessible design of information technology (IT) results in the “second digital divide” for people with disabilities and how the accessible design of IT can create a level playing field in education and employment.
Accessible IT Requirements: Lessons Learned From US Campuses Who Received Civil Rights Complaints
Audiences: Postsecondary instructors and administrators
Description: Learn how more than twenty postsecondary institutions have responded to civil rights complaints that their IT was not fully accessible to faculty, students, staff, and visitors with disabilities. How can other campuses use the resolutions to guide practices on their own campuses.
Universal Design in Higher Education
Audiences: Educators and administrators
Description: Learn how universal design principles, guidelines, and performance indicators can be applied to instruction, information technology, physical spaces, and student services for the purpose of making educational products and environments accessible to all students, including those with disabilities.
Universal Design of Instruction
Audiences: Precollege and/or postsecondary instructors
Description: Learn how universal design principles, guidelines, and performance indicators can be applied to curriculum and instruction in order to make all learning activities accessible to all students, including those with disabilities.
Encouraging Professors to Teach Accessible/Universal Design in Their Courses
Audiences: Computing and engineering professors
Description: IT and other companies who wish to design products that are accessible to all potential consumers complain that they cannot find enough applicants who understand how to design products that are accessible to consumers with a broad range of abilities. Learn how to encourage faculty members to help students develop the skills they need to fill these positions.
Increasing the Participation of People with Disabilities in STEM Careers
Audiences: Precollege and postsecondary instructors and administrators
Description: Learn barriers people with disabilities face in pursuing academic studies and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and strategies to assure their full inclusion in these challenging fields.