Inclusive Pedagogy

All students benefit when classroom and curricular spaces are made more inclusive by increasing accessibility. Legal accommodations are targeted to students with disabilities and determined by the DRS.  Inclusive pedagogy (UDL) provides greater accessibility to all students and facilitates communication throughout the university community.

  • Legal accommodations are required accommodations teachers must make for students that have been identified by the campus disability office (DRS) based on testing and assessment that may not be available to all students.  DRS letters address the required legal accommodations to which students are entitled. Information on managing DRS accommodations.
  • Inclusive pedagogy, also called Universal Design for Learning (UDL), allows teachers to make their classrooms more inclusive for all students.  In addition to benefiting students receiving accommodations, inclusive design benefits students who have not disclosed their disabilities to the university for a variety of reasons (such as cost of testing or stigma) and students who have various learning styles but have no diagnosed disabilities. Multiple modes of delivery have also been found to benefit many students who have different learning styles and needs by delivering material in more diverse modes. Teachers often rely on one strategy in their teaching and are textual learners, but many of our students learn best by different modes including visualizing, listening, and/or hands-on activities. Consider providing information in more than one form to your students. For example: lecturing with a handout (or PowerPoint) with similar information, being sure videos are close-captioned.  Inclusive pedagogy promotes greater student success.

Syllabus Statement: Disability and Access- includes a model statement, information on crafting your own statement, and your responsibilities.  Letting students with disabilities know you comply with ADA, and more importantly, are committed to making your class accessible and inclusive is important. The university requires that you include a statement on accommodating disability in your syllabus.   

How to Improve Accessibility of Course Materials and Community Communications

Ally - allows you to improve the overall accessibility for both visually and hearing-impaired students. Ally can be applied to individual assignments, pages, and files, and does not require you redesign the entire class at one time. (Contact OIT about including Ally in your canvas shell; it is only seen by the instructor). If Ally is loaded into your Canvas shell students can choose alternative formats to view many of the pages and files you have uploaded.

Anthology Ally
CU Denver faculty resources for Anthology Ally


Creating Accessible PDFs by Kate Miller: Slide deck

Make it Accessible: Microsoft Word by Kate Miller: Slide deck:  presentation slides

Make it Accessible: PowerPoint by Kate Miller: Slide deck: powerpoint


Improving auditory materials for student and colleagues:

Closed Captioning in Zoom- For information on setting up closed captioning in Zoom.

Audio Transcription of a Zoom Meeting- For after a Zoom meeting is recorded.

Video Guide to enable closed captioning during a course or meeting as well as how to create an audio transcription of a video after recording using Techsmith Knowmia. Contact OIT if you need information on accessing Techsmith Knowmia.


Improving visual materials for students and colleagues:

Alt Text- Makes visual text accessible for students and colleagues with visual impairments by including descriptions and provide information on images used in class materials and other communications.

The Immersive Reader is now in all canvas courses. This tool both enlarges texts in Pages and also reads them. Please let your students know about the availability of this tool.

For further help on making your class materials or meeting materials accessible please contact the Academic Technology Support. You may also contact colleen.donnelly@ucdenver.edu, Chair of the Disability Committee, with suggestions, requests, and comments. For training and additional information on available technology, contact the OIT Service Desk: oit-servicedesk@ucdenver.edu.