Integrating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with Digital Accessibility Initiatives

00:00.00

Erin Evans 

Thank you all for joining us for our most recent Tech In EdTech. Today we are super excited to have Rick Ferrie from Savvas Learning join us so we will be talking about integrating universal design for learning with digital accessibility initiatives. I'm Erin Evans. I work here at Magic as one of our strategic solution members in the consulting unit and Rick, thank you for joining us.

00:29.35     

Rick Ferrie 

Thanks for having me.

00:35.34

Erin Evans 

So um, as we get started give me a little bit of background about how you got into your role at Savvas Learning and your journey since.

00:44.26

Rick Ferrie

Well, I think for me getting into accessibility was an accident. You know I wish I could tell you it was a plan, my goal all along but actually I've been in educational publishing for almost my entire adult working life and at one point I was working for a small content development company based out of Boston and I ran into some folks from CAST David Rose, Skip Stahl, Chuck Hitchcock. They came to our office and they showed us some amazing things they were doing on brain sort brain research and their whole premise was that print wasn't just inaccessible to a lot of folks that it actually wasn't the best medium for a lot of learners to get access to content, engage with content and I was so impressed with the fact that it was rooted in science and from that day forward I kept thinking if this works for kids that have these types of challenges that the mainstream implications would be amazing, right? that it could improve education. So that sort of changed my trajectory into even though I again wish to get to I plan it really plan it into accessibility and advocating for students with challenges almost the rest of my career and so I've you know I've been in the business a while, I have a lot of different roles but no matter whether it was in my title or not I've always been involved in accessibility um, and then a few years ago Pearson sold off their K12 unit which became the Savvas Learning company. Um, and I had been doing some consulting and and I just missed the education market and so they said hey we have an opening like to come back and so I've been back two and a half years a little bit longer.

02:20.55

Rick Ferrie

And it's just been great. You know I missed K12, I was in higher ed. I was actually in business and healthcare, doing consulting work and it's just been exciting to be back in K12 which is my first love and the place where I feel most comfortable. So since I've been back, you know they've made a real commitment to accessibility. Um, and it's sort of been a match made in heaven. Again, no great plans of mine. It's just lucky if you hang around long and fair and you know some things you end up being the “I will” folks. So, I couldn't be happier with the role of the company and the things we're doing to help kids with disabilities.

02:50.40

Erin Evans 

I love how you said you kind of fell into accessibility because I have found a lot of people who are in accessibility roles have that same “I just sort of found it mentality” and I think that's great because we are all coming from different backgrounds joining together to move forward and understanding how important it is to take accessibility as far as we can go.

03:18.84

Rick Ferrie

 And one of the interesting things to me is that someone like myself who kind of accidentally, the other ah population or at least a large percentage of the population have people that have been affected either themselves directly or loved ones and so I think that's an interesting sort of path to accessibility as well or any sort of area where you're working with students with have any kind of challenges right and so it's one of the gratifying things about it is being able to help those people who are coming up from the fact that it's affecting their lives immediately and directly either personally or loved ones. So I think that's sort of the two camps that probably make up the most of this are folks like myself that kind of wander into it and others who have ah who have a real purpose to find out what's going up because they want to. So it's an interesting mix of people from that perspective.

04:05.73

Erin Evans 

I absolutely agree! As we move forward into today's agenda you did mention CAST which I was hoping you could define for our listeners who aren't as familiar with CAST as everybody else maybe and then also if you could just you know tell us a little bit about what universal design for learning is?

04:28.75

Rick Ferrie

Well, CAST um I don't know their exact history ah because I met them I think CAST had already been added a few years and it's this center, I'm embarrassed I say I can't remember the Center for Applied Science Technology, not quite sure but they've been around for a long time and they were started by ah David Rose and some other folks who came out of Harvard who were different disciplines right? Um, and I think what attracted me to them right away was just the way they looked at education was completely different right? Um, from the standard you know you go to school, you learn to become a teacher or administrator um, and they were really interested in sort of I don't know they articulate this way but breaking down all these barriers and breaking down the things and so I think early on one of the things CAST had done was actually help ah, scholastic and different companies develop tools based on what they knew. Um, and then the universal design for learning is an outgrowth of universal design right, which came out about the idea that physical access for folks, right? The idea of architecture and changing buildings so that people with any kind of physical disabilities or other impairments could get access, physical access into places they need to be and so UDL comes from that idea that taking that same concept of engineering right of thinking of designing things for access.

05:52.88

Rick Ferrie

Ah, to the education environment and it isn't just materials or buildings, right? It's the whole approach to education. It's really a framework is what UDL is. So I think from that standpoint again I was very attracted to that because I think education can be very sedentary right and it gets very traditional and it's a hard institution to change and I think what's been interesting about CAST and particularly with UDL is this idea of being able to approach change at different levels right? Different levels where you're building organization or your teacher strategies or your student engagement just gives you a way to think about educating that's different than the traditional path through that. So what specifically about UDL? I think one of the things is it's a framework right? I think it's not a technical style like WCAG and we can talk more about that later.

06:45.73

Rick Ferrie

And I think what makes it difficult for folks is that initially this idea of engaging students and giving them different ways to represent themselves and show what they know and engage with the curriculum is really simple right? that people get that and it resonates easily. It's then when you get into the details of how do I put this in. What does this look like in a classroom day right? What do I do as a teacher? What does this mean for the student or administrators? It can get really complicated um, and I think it gets for some folks too esoteric because they want to be told, do step 1, step 2, step 3 um and I think that's not really step one. It's to do your list out tasks right? Sort of think about how you want to approach UDL and so I think from that standpoint it's an easy understanding about the 3 representations engagement and action, expression. That's an easy piece. That's when you get into it that folks are finding UDL a little challenging and how does this affect my day job? You know, what do I do as a teacher? What do I do as an administrator? What does that mean for me as a student? Is where UDL can get a little bit complicated for folks.

07:49.14

Erin Evans 

Yeah, and that's a good segue into you know talking to us about how companies, the publishing companies, in particular, education tech companies. How are they currently implementing UDL in their products?

08:03.21

Rick Ferrie

Well, I think one of the interesting things, and again this is just my perspective. You find fifty people you'd have forty-nine different ones, right? I think part of this is that there's a lot of UDL in the guidelines and the framework and the approach that a lot of providers are already doing, right?

08:19.83

Erin Evans

Yes.

08:21.94

Rick Ferrie

They may not be as purposeful about it or they may not be as rigorous in terms of documenting and showing it. But I think you know, things like what do I do in small group instruction, right? Here are some other options for students to look at, right? because one of the great things about UDL is this idea of not making options as an accident or secondary but making options as a primary piece right? So I think the other problem with this UDL sometimes it gets too focused on the technology aspects of it and the technology is absolutely important to supporting UDL but it isn't UDL, right? Having technology do things doesn't mean you're doing UDL. So, I think it starts with the program design. So I think for people providing educational materials to the market. The first thing is what are you doing already that supports that UDL framework right? Um and then I think for providers what's happening is that after the pandemic and everyone was online all the time there are a bunch of cracks exposed in digital learning right? and it wasn't it wasn't so much, sorry? yeah well, I think no one planned to be online all the time for every aspect of school with no options, right? And so I think what happened was.

09:20.79

Erin Evans 

And yes for sure I said yes, definitely.

09:35.27

Rick Ferrie

Exposed a lot of cracks. Not so much in the actual, you know curriculum itself. You know here's my history curriculum, here is this, that part sort of worked, It's all the other things around it, right? So let's say if you had kids that needed speech therapy or were on IPs and a lot of the IPs are based on observation right? That just really couldn't happen and so I think a lot of things were exposed around yeah, you can log in, and yeah, you can get your assignment but all the other stuff that goes with learning right and that you get in a school environment there are big big problems with that and it was gaps and I think what's happening now because of that experience folks are realizing that they need maximum flexibility right?  To me at least in my view, the genie's out of the bottle. You know may not always be online all the time but a blended environment. You know, digital and brick and mortar. It's here to stay right? and I think it's going to vary between state, between district, between buildings even I think you'll have some folks show up for classes physically and other close other kids do it online depending on what the class is, right? So I think that amount of variability between how you're going to do things online and the technology that you need to learn with has really changed the game so it isn't just a question of here's a bunch of questions, answer them. It's like where do I get homework? How do I get feedback from the teacher? What are the other resources I can use? Um and so I think the opportunity and the challenge for providers like Savvas is, It isn't just about making the product, here's your curriculum for math right? It's about all the other things the teacher needs and the student need and all the other resources that you could have available in a school, you now need some way to figure out how to use those in an online environment because chances are good at some point during the day you're going to have interaction that is digitally focused versus being in a classroom and the traditional teacher and you're sending their listening piece.

11:31.24

Erin Evans 

I agree and I think what you were saying about how the pandemic uncovered some of those gaps and how everybody was shifted to an online learning system, is definite prose but then it definitely also showed how varied learners are. Something we already know in the educational system but it just really exposed that and I think that that is a big driver for how UDL is coming into play, into those curriculums, and into those classrooms.

12:02.90

Rick Ferrie

Yeah, and I think what's interesting and you'll have to tell me to stop because I'll be in my soapbox and I'll never get off. I mean one of the inching things to me is that and and this is something that's near and dear to me this whole discussion about what assistive technology is right. So in the context, for many years assistive technology was primarily directed at kids. It had some sort of challenge either physical impairments or cognitive impairments. It wasn't mainstream. Um, and I think from that standpoint if you think about a kid now they have in their hands these smartphones that have more processing power.   

12:37.65

Rick Ferrie

Then you know I mean it's just amazing, the technology available to them and so this idea of what does assistive means and to whom and why right? So if you have an IP or 5 or 4 and you have a very specific thing you know you get assigned technology that you need. But what we're seeing in the marketplace is you've got districts assigning tools to do word-by-word audio highlighting or translation or here you know instead of writing your answer you could speak it or you can record a video. We're starting to see more and more districts make that available to everyone. So this idea that this assistive technology is meant for a certain group of kids and generally around specific disabilities I think has to be challenged, right? Obviously, there are some kids that need very specific types of technology to help them access and make progress in the curriculum. But I think we have to sort of open the box up a little bit and think that technology as a tool, as a support, as a communication is important to all students because once they leave school, they're gonna be spending a lot of time on technology just as their normal lives, right? I mean banking, pick, you know getting your health records all that sort of stuff and so I think one of the challenges in the K12 environment is we got to think a little bit different about you know technology, generally.

13:54.52

Rick Ferrie

You know what's assistive and you know what technology can we make available to all folks versus that stuff that some kids absolutely need in making sure they're still getting that and then how does that affect things like assessment and how does that affect things like progress monitoring? So I'm very excited about I know it's challenging because there's a lot of questions that don't have answers that are fully just yet. But I just think it's great because I do think you know you've seen these tools now where if you if English is not your first language you can write on the fly and have a conversation now that you would never be able to before.

14:31.55

Rick Ferrie

Um, and I think that's really important for kids that English is not their first language right in school and so I think schools are struggling with that because the possibilities are overwhelming and they can easily outstrip the ability to manage it and focus it, and making sure that you know people are being measured that there's equity, that there's a whole bunch of other things that have to come into play there. But I do think the other piece of this is we need to rethink what assistive technology is um, and then what that means for all the students not just kids that traditionally have been the ones identified as needing device X or Y or software and so why.

15:05.73

Erin Evans 

So that's a really good point and that brings up my next question for you which is how are UDL and the web content accessibility guidelines alike and how are they different?

15:18.90

Rick Ferrie

Well, I think it's interesting because one of the things, that's happening in the K12 market is what we get from the states and districts and even from schools, questions about the accessibility of the product. Some of these questions are called UDL questions, right? or questionnaires or ADA questions um, and they're not really any of those things. So I think there's some confusion in the market and it's understandable, right because UDL and accessibility are different. So WCAG is a technical you know, mature evolved managed standard right? properly managed standard um and you know, you've got the B3C managing, you've got releases, you've got the whole thing that you need to do which is a very rigorous approach to manage a technical standard. It's an international tetra Center. There are rules about how it works so from that standpoint that's the first fundamental difference between that and UDL. UDL is a dynamic framework, right? It isn't managed the same way that WCAG is managed, right? Um and one of the things that I think in our market that people have to be careful with is that you can say oh we have UDL supports built into our product that doesn't mean it's accessible and the same thing you can say I have an accessible product but that doesn't mean it's following UDL guidelines, right and as you know well there's overlap between there are some ways to align the WCAG’s success criteria with the UDLl checkpoints but it's not nebulousism's right word.

16:47.98

Rick Ferrie

It isn't necessarily a deep connection. Um, and I think what I always encourage to our customers and folks when I give presentations and speeches about it's like look decide if you need something accessible then you say to what level, right? You can say I need this, I need to be 2.1, I need 2.0, I need it to be whatever level that you want it to be accessible. Then there's a kind of a very specific concrete way to say yes, we're there or not. Ah, there's some issues with that which I'll get to in a second. UDL is a little bit different right? UDL isn't well, be to this level of compliance. I think what I would encourage to say is hey, do you have ways for kids to provide multiple means of expressing themselves? So If the question says fill in the blank. Do they have to type it? Can they record the voice? Can they make a video? Um, could they print out a piece of paper and draw a picture versus using words? So I think what makes UDL more challenging is that it isn't just a point, give me X, Y, and Z, and UDL's done right? It's got to fit sort of what it is your expectations are for your students in terms of being able to engage with the material. One of the other interesting things that we're seeing that mark with UDL is folks focus on that technology piece right? So a lot of questions about, do you do word-by-word audio highlighting? Do you do speech-to-text? Do you um, and these are all good things for students, right? It provides flexibility but having any of the doesn't mean you're doing UDL. I mean it's an ah important piece of it. So I think as we go forward what I'm hoping is there's more clarity in the market about stuff should be accessible, you should ask for accessible, you should say at the level and there's ways to measure it, right? For UDL I think it's a bigger discussion than just as is it accessible or not. You know, what's your student population? What is it that you're looking for? What are your teachers comfortable with? Is there a lot of small group instruction or are there physical spaces in your school where your students can go out? or do you have some students who would rather be online for whatever reason they're not comfortable in a school? then how does your product and your services support those? So I think the UDL piece is broader and more complicated um and isn't necessarily going to fit in a nice little yes-no-click-the-box kind of form. Ah, but right now folks seem to be trying to fit that in there and I think you know early days that it's proving not to be as effective and I expect that sort of clarity to get better as we go forward.

19:13.41

Erin Evans 

Yeah, and I think that also applies to the WCAG guidelines. There are some places where it is very cut and dry and then there are some places where it's a little nebulous and you know you were talking about the text-to-speech or the word-by-word highlighting and those are all fantastic tools to assist in learning. But that doesn't mean that they are also um, accessible tools. So there's a lot of moving parts and pieces to assess. What is it as you were saying what is it exactly that your need is? What are you looking for and how are you asking for that? and how are you ensuring that the product you're looking for or your building has all of that involved?

19:50.10

Rick Ferrie

Yeah, and I think the other piece of that with accessibility and there's you you can ask for VPATS right? You can ask for the certification and I think those are good tools right? I think VPATS can tell you the level of compliance. I think the bigger problem that we're running into now is something that can be accessible technically and checklist compliance and still provide a bad user experience, right? That is it accessible, but it's also bad? So that's why I think the UDL and the accessibility piece come together and in sort of my vision of the future, which probably is crazy but the idea of all products should be accessible right? That shouldn't really be a big discussion at some point any longer, right? And then once you've got that accessibility to me that's the baseline. If there's a barrier to the student accessing the curriculum, It's kind of game over right? It could be a good product? Could be a bad product? They don't have a chance to know that because they can't have access to it. Once you eliminate that accessibility barrier.

20:47.75

Rick Ferrie

Once you eliminate that accessibility barrier and once they're using the product then their experience, their user outcome isn't based on accessibility anymore, right? It's based on a lot of other things based as program design and where? what can students do to engage? Do they see themselves in the curriculum? There are ways to get access to it, so I hope at some point in the future and I think slowly but surely the districts and states are moving there. It's like gotta be accessible. You know, step 1, we don't have to have a conversation about it anymore it's successful. Now what is it about your product that meets the needs of my students, right? and you said to me what are the biggest things?  You’ve got to be crystal clear about what are your goals. 

21:25.54

Rick Ferrie

If you’re a district that has ah a sizable UDL population or something. Then there are some specific things you're looking for to support that population, right? or if you've got a group where you've got um kids that are, you have more fluidity about, they're not necessarily going from band to band, grade to grade that, how can I get ah more challenging material to the students? How can I get more specific content to where the students are those are, right? Those are the things UDL can help with but I think it all starts with really asking providers like yourselves, right?  What is it that you need in the product right? Um, and there's a lot of talk most of the time about aligning to standards, right? The state standards, the district standards, and all that's good stuff too. But even then aligned to the standards doesn't necessarily mean it's great, right? That's it's like accessibility to me, It's got to be aligned centers, it’s got to be accessible, right? That's if you're not doing that then I don't see how you're successful in the market. 

22:18.38

Rick Ferrie

What makes you successful is that, how are you improving student outcomes right? That's really where the game is and it's going to take, we're getting really close but I think at some point some of this is more baseline and doesn't mean easy. But baseline stuff will just be in play and then you know it's up to us to make products that address all your students' needs, right? that helps your teachers create really flexible environments with options for kids and this blended world we live in. So I'm hoping at some point that's where we get to It's just gonna take some time.

22:46.96

Erin Evans

Yeah, I agree and with that, I'm going to kind of switch us to talking about the future and thinking about you know what tech considerations, do you think need to be made for the successful execution of UDL?

23:01.89

Rick Ferrie

Well, I think there's a couple of things and I've been thinking about this line because it's part of the, you know part of trying to understand one of the first place to start is that you as a school or a district or building or state or whatever level that you want to think about this. You got to think about your infrastructure first and foremost, what is your technology infrastructure plan? What did you have in LMS? Do you have your login systems? What do you have um and then what's the goal of that? How are you? How are you maintaining that? Because I think one of the big challenges around UDL from a technology perspective is interoperability because oh there's this great tool, this great product, I want to get it, and then well except that your login approach doesn't allow this to work or the way those products are built I can't run the third party products that you've purchased for you know the benefit of your students. So the very first thing I think is a more holistic look at your environment right? Here's my technology infrastructure right? here's how my students get onto our system, here's what they do, here's what the parents do, here's what the teachers do, and they're gonna have to get ah um not slave-to-standards but they're going to have to stay on which some level of standards and say look we want your product to be interoperable with this. Here's our third-party support tools, here's our grading tools, here's our attendance tools um and some states and districts are pretty sophisticated about it and others aren't.

24:33.15

Rick Ferrie

So I think the very first thing is trying to understand, what do you need your technology infrastructure in the school to do. Um so, that's step 1, and then maybe not step 1 or 2 but sort of another point is what are you giving your kids? You give them Chromebooks, you give them Ipads, you let them use your phones. What can they use your phones for, right? So part of that infrastructure has to be how are you going to let your students and your teachers and your parents, administrators everyone work with your infrastructure. Is it going to be locked down so that they can only get in through certain things? Do you provide devices? Are you going to let people um, use their own devices? or you know so a lot of that and I'm making this sound like it's a simple thing It's not, right? But, you've got to start there because then the rest of it doesn't work right? If you, if you say, gosh I love this speech highlighting tool, I love this translating or this word prediction or this masking tool or whatever it is you think you want you can't just go buy that. Well, you shouldn't just go buy that without thinking about how is this going to work in my environment. Is it compatible with my devices? What what's going to happen? Am I going to make sure it works on all the devices I give the students or are we expecting them to use their phones or their own computers when they get home? So I think none of this stuff is very sexy, it is kind of boring but I do think it's a more and more critical piece for schools to have to get their heads around if they're going to take advantage of this technology and if they're going to approach from ah from a UDL perspective, right? So there's a technology piece I think in the future that the states and districts are going to have to get a little bit more on top of and they will right? but I just think it's it's one of those things that these are not necessarily technical environments, right? Yeah, this is why people get into education, right because I want to be 90 percent, right?

26:18.67

Rick Ferrie

Um, and I think that part is going to be a little challenging to the breadth of things that they're gonna be facing um, and then on the design product design piece, I think part of it has to be what is the design. You know whether you have text-to-speech highlighting built-in or you can do speech-to-text or whatever. That's one piece of it. It's sort of like what, what's the design of your product? You know what is it possible for a student or a teacher to say, oh, I have a group of students who I think would work better in a group on this right? Can I have this curriculum work so that they can work collaboratively? Um oh, I have a student who for whatever reason doesn't have the right motor skills to draw and we need to let them speak their answers. We need to let them so I think part of it is how is the curriculum set up to engage those students. Are there ways that they can see themselves reflected in this and then get engaged in it and respond in a way that works for them right? and so that's what I mean about the options and that's a design. The technology again is important but I just think that's part of this has to be at the product design asking about the product design. How does your product support? Ah, vis-a-vis the UDL framework the things I need in my district right? I need those abilities for students to work together, in small groups. I need some folks the ability would get up and just do ah, a presentation or record a presentation and that's sort of a new thing.

27:48.40

Rick Ferrie

Right now right? because I think it exists but I don't think it's been as formal um and it's baked in as it needs to be and then the assessment piece is really critical. So it's great that you can give folks options to show and express their knowledge and their mastery of these things but the teacher is also going to have to be able to assess it and it's one thing to go through and click the multiple choice boxes. It's another thing you have to go through and watch a 5-minute video that fits something together and then decide yes, they get it, they don't get it, right? So there are some challenges around the assessment piece that need to be worked out. So I think in one hand there is a technology piece.

28:24.21

Rick Ferrie

The school and the district and the state have to get their arms around and then there's a whole other piece about the design of the product right? You don't have to ask the technical questions, It's like explain to me how this works for a population where I have you know 20% of my kids reading below grade level right? What can you do for me there? And so I think that's where I see the future of UDL not just to align a standard, not just something accessible, but here's all I can do to match your environment and your learning profiles.

28:52.55

Erin Evans

All right! So one more question and then I have our final wrap-up question. But, how do you think that integrating UDL and WCAG will shape or change learning as we look ahead into the next 5, 10, 20 years into the future?

29:12.30

Rick Ferrie

Well, I'm terrible at predicting the future, and ah I've been wrong so many times otherwise that you know I'd be making a lot of money. Um, I think a couple of things, I think this idea of students as individuals right and being able to more easily if things are planned and done properly meet the individuals where they need to be, right? because the whole promise of technology has been for a while in education right? Oh, it's data-driven and I can assign students individual pieces, right? Based on the data if they get these answers wrong, I can give them instructions to help right. I think that model never really worked the way it could have because I think it was too linear and too restrictive in a lot of ways, right? I think where UDL can change that is okay, here is the question you get wrong, here's you know what you can do to do. You get your so your mastery of this content but now here's a bunch of different options for you to show that mastery, right? If you're not a verbal person? If you're a more visual person you can go ahead and sketch this out and show us what you're doing or if you are a verbal person and you'd much rather do that than write. Here's a way that I can express this piece of it. So I think this idea of data-driven feed instantaneous feedback to help direct instruction to kids so they can show they ah understand the concepts and the things they need to learn now has a chance to work better right? because I think the idea of it was great. 

30:44.30

Rick Ferrie

The beginning but it was such a limited response. It's like well here's another five thousand things to read to hope for you to get your score but if you don't aren't a good reader or reading's not your thing that's not going to help you right? Um, and I think the other thing is they're updating the UDL guidelines is that the idea of finding what engages students, right? Letting them have more choices. It's not infinite choices, right? They're still rigorous standards. There's still things they have to learn but there can be options for them to hey, you know I want to learn this text or on this particular topic, I like to go here. So I think the promise of UDL actually can make this idea of data-driven learning work because it isn't really working. It's too linear too fixed um and it doesn't have the flexibility. If you have more of a UDL approach and this idea of options for students and the ability look and I've always felt and again, this is getting crazy right? This idea get kids up at 8 a.m. right? and when they're teenagers there's been tons of research that shows, they're not really firing all cylinders at 8 a.m. but to go like fine let them do it at different times. Um, and I think so I think if we can long as we can show rigor right? long we can show mastery of content and students are actually learning what they're supposed to and that can be measured. I think this idea of flexibility is really going to free up education or it can, right? This idea of this rigid idea I go to school and I do this at 8 and I do this at 9 you know, I think that can be a little more fluid that it is right because you'd still need discipline.

32:18.78

Rick Ferrie

You still need folks getting used to the socializing, the being responsible, to doing things on time that part of, I'm not suggesting should go away. But I do think the UDL layer on top of this is going to make the education a little bit more liberating potentially for the students and hopefully the teachers too, right? Um, and a lot of that has to do with being able to use the technology successfully but a lot of it has to do with sort of, maybe, be willing to think a little bit differently about how your classroom works and what the student can or can't do. So that to me is a big hope for the future is that the UDL sort of opens up the box a little bit and lets some error where it's desperately needed. So it's not one size fits all students you know there’s one way to learn and it's this way right? I think that could be really helpful and that's to me the promise of UDL in the future.

33:10.30

Erin Evans

Finally Rick, what advice do you have for people who work in accessibility learning design and ed tech?

33:21.17

Rick Ferrie

Ah, Well, first of all, it's a great field to get into, right? It's very interesting to me because you know I've been in education mostly but I've left a couple of times um and real business is so boring to me. I think the idea of education of trying to help people learn, to teach them to become better learners to see them be successful. It's a very exciting thing to do look you know if you want to make a lot of money you can go into you know, options or the financial markets and do whatever you want. But I find I find really fulfilling this idea that you're helping people become better learners which potentially can improve their sort of outcomes in life. Um, and I think what's interesting for folks on the accessibility in the UDL side is that and I believe this very firmly and this is another thing that CAST has pushed a UDL  right?

34:12.64

Rick Ferrie

There is no mythical average learner, right? I think that's been one of the really damaging things that's happened in education in the last years and I love the fact that UDL is aimed at the margins. Um, and if you're interested in that if you're interested in making things work for people who have potential barriers of any kind socioeconomic, intellectual if you can get that to work there's always broader mainstream applications for that. Um, and I would say start with the hard stuff if you're one of those people that like challenges then the accessibility, the UDL side is a good way to get into it because I think then you have the potential of having a much broader impact across a wider range of students but rather than well here's this one way to do this and it works for one kid, I mean I think about my own education, I was lucky I had a good memory, right.

34:55.24

Erin Evans

Yeah.

35:06.37

Rick Ferrie

So back in the day having a good memory was a huge part of being successful, right? because all you had to do is regurgitate what you remembered and you were in good shape. Um, and I think if I had to go back to school now I'd be in trouble because after a while it isn't just memory right? It's other things that you have to do so I would encourage folks who are interested in accessibility and interested in helping folks that are on the on the margins, is the way to go because you're actually helping everybody in that regard. Those things aside from helping those kids that have barriers that ah in their lives were unfairly placed on them anyway, you have the satisfaction of that. You can also know that you're helping a much broader range of folks because and I've seen this over and over the implications for the mainstream and for average students whatever that ends up means is always beneficial. So that's why I would encourage folks to do it. Um, and it's very satisfying. You meet a lot of interesting people and you're always learning.

36:02.85

Erin Evans

Always learning.

36:02.96

Rick Ferrie

Right? You're always learning new stuff right? You can always. You know on things like demographics and brain research which I only understand a tiny bit when I read but it does help me a little bit. So I think that's the other piece of this that's very exciting, is that it's not just education there are other fields and disciplines that you sort of start to pay attention to because it impacts what you do. So that's why I encourage folks to do it and I'm happy to help anybody who's interested point them in directions that they might want to consider in terms of career.

36:35.23

Erin Evans

Well thank you so much for your time today Rick and thank you, for those of you who have listened to this podcast. We've really enjoyed having you. We hope you've learned some interesting and fun things on UDL and Rick again thank you for your time and we hope to see you all again on our next episode.

36:53.22

Rick Ferrie

Thank you, Erin.