UDL Loves the Curb Cut Analogy. Is it loved for the right reasons?

 What the curb cut means to me

The literal curb cut is a sloped ramp in a concrete sidewalk that brings users from street level up to the sidewalk level (or down to street level) with a greater ease that can be particularly useful for anyone dealing with a permanent, temporary or situational issue in mobility. It is also useful to able-bodied users who have no identified need whatsoever. 

The symbol of the curb cut in design and educational design helps to assist a learner so that their pathway in their learning journey will have fewer obstacles, while maintaining learning rigor. I like to think of the teacher who always uses closed captioning when showing a video in class: Those with permanent hearing loss will benefit, along with those who have a temporary issues following the dialogue, such as language learners who are not yet proficient in the video’s spoken language, and students who have a situational need like a noisy classroom may read the text. The student may be causing their own problems such as wearing their ear buds and playing music in a desperate bid for coolness, they too will benefit from the dialogue in a video’s closed captions. 

This is only scratching the surface with situations where closed captions may be of benefit, and as a teacher I no longer care to identify all the needs associated with closed captioning to make the decision to use the “CC” button on the webplayer. Instead, my default it to always use the closed captions when viewing a video as a class. 

The meaning in education

A concrete curb cut is always there, is for everyone and can be relied upon for local residents (or my students, in this case) to be used whenever and however they like. This, to me, is the difference between an accommodation that is a specific to a special need that a specific student may have and providing a curb cut. If the curb cuts is an effective analogy for UDL, then we must consider that UDL represents the single greatest design that a teacher can provide their students, one where the students have voice and choice in how they interact with that single design, as they like.

When the curb cut analogy goes wrong

Imagine a local city planner and urban designer heading out to your nearest street corner in orange high visibility vests, they are directing users towards or away from a curb cut. They are making decisions about who will use a curb cut to go between street and sidewalk levels and when the chosen may use it. Periodically and without warning, the curb cut is taken away or returned without warning. Some curb cuts provided have highly specialized uses accommodating for single use cases and other provided curb cuts appeal to multiple uses, but only possibly so. The entire effort is expensive and incredibly time consuming for the city planner and urban designer.

These all feel like special accommodations that are made for some learners, some of the time. Such accommodations are not curb cuts at all. Instead, we need to keep thinking of special accommodations as critical for some students when necessary, but only as accommodations. This feels like a major misunderstanding in education to me. I’ve heard speakers, read books and seen entire organizations flying the universal label to their education solutions while also suggesting that students should be provided with individualized accommodations as the means to achieving universally designed learning experiences. Nothing could be further from the truth, and as a classroom teacher, nothing makes me more afraid then the prospect of creating multiple bespoke solutions and the extra work associated with it. 

Let’s unpack this difference for a moment. When a curb cut is set in urban design, the users may use it however they like. Some may use it with wheeled mobility, while some small children may run up and down the ramp. Some teens on scooters may use it to navigate their city and some may avoid it altogether so they may jump with their scooter from one level to another. No matter, the curb cut is a permanent, understood and dependable fixture in their city scape for use by all. The same is true when designing with UDL in mind. I need to ask myself what features of my classroom and my academic course that I’m offering can be created in increase access and allow for individual choices for all my students. Such thinking will bring me to the closed captioning, or considering other all-class changes that my particular students face. For many of my middle schoolers, providing pencils and other materials supports the most forgetful, but also the occasionally stressed student who needs something for a smooth class. Where not having materials ready for class a generation ago may have resulted in some sort of punishment or lowered grade, today teachers have a box of pencils at the ready at all times. The rigid middle school classrooms have given way to the open workshop model where all students, no matter if you can identify all the use cases, will benefit from the flexibility and choice provided. 

Through this perspective, the curb cut is not a special or occasional feature of a classroom. Instead, it is an efficient and singular way to provide access to learning for all.