reflection – SUNY Online Teaching

brick wall with an accessible icon on it.

UDL Is Not Accessibility: The Problem with UDL Inflation

Written by CEN-PICKETAL on October 6, 2026. Posted in blog, Instructional Design, reflection, teaching online.

Why one useful pedagogical framework should not become shorthand for accessibility, inclusive teaching, and everything we value in quality online course design

Lately, I have been hearing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) invoked more and more often in conversations about accessibility. I have also seen UDL training emphasized in professional development curricula and promoted by online directors, instructional designers, and teaching and learning professionals as though it were a sufficient response to accessibility, or as though UDL expertise could substitute for accessibility knowledge and remediation skills.

Part 2: When Did We Stop Building Online Courses? – 8 Institutional Risks

8 Institutional Risks

The question is no longer simply who owns the content. The question is: Who owns the learning experience?

In Part 1 of this series, I described a troubling development that has begun to emerge in conversations with instructional designers, faculty developers, online learning leaders, and quality reviewers across SUNY: asynchronous online courses in which the learning management system (LMS) contains little more than a syllabus, a few announcements, and a link to a publisher platform where nearly all of the instructional activity takes place.