What Is Universal Design?
Ronald Mace, an architect and polio survivor, first introduced the term Universal Design in the 1970’s. He built on the prior concept of handicap-accessible design, making it more inclusive. He argued all people would benefit from thoughtfully designed spaces and products.
In his own words “The whole concept of universal design is not to single out anyone because of a disability . . . The design isn’t special for one group of people over another. It works for ‘everyone’ to the greatest extent.” Today, universal design is the gold standard across many industries, including architecture and construction, consumer goods, and web design.
What Is Universal Design for Learning?
Within the education industry, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) emerged in the 1990’s when a group of clinicians, including neuropsychologist David Rose, grew discouraged with the way schools approached students with disabilities. In response, they developed a framework to improve outcomes and create better learning opportunities through inclusive design.
For a quick view of UDL guidelines, review this one-page worksheet from CAST.
How Does Boom Measure Up?
Some UDL guidelines are built into the Boom platform by design. Boom Card creators don’t need to do anything for their Boom Cards to:
- Enhance capacity for monitoring progress
- Develop self-assessment and reflection
- Increase mastery-oriented feedback
- Optimize individual choice and autonomy
- Offer ways of customizing the display of information
- Vary the methods for response and navigation
While the platform adheres to UDL principles, it is also important for curriculum developers to create Boom Cards with these guidelines in mind. In some cases, a few small tweaks to a set of Boom Cards can bring them into alignment with best practices.
Here are a few examples of opportunities for Boom Card Creators:
- Offer alternatives for auditory information: This can be done by adding accessibility (also called alt) text or captions for sounds and videos.
- Offer alternatives for visual information: Add alt text for buttons, images, gifs, and videos that describe the element’s purpose or content.
- Illustrate through multiple media: Represent concepts in at least two forms of symbolic representation (for example, both text and image).
- Optimize access to tools and assistive technologies: Double-check a card’s z-order to make it usable for a learner using a switch device, voice control, or tab navigation.
New Regulations You Should Understand
We want students everywhere to be able to use the Boom Cards you create.
That’s why it’s important to be aware of new regulations in a number of states requiring that digital learning resources in public school classrooms meet enhanced accessibility standards (WCAG 2.2). These early adoptors may be the first to enact such rules, but they’re unlikely to be the last.
The Boom Student Player has been WCAG 2.2 compliant for over two years. With this new legislation, schools are contacting us stating that the Boom Cards must also be compliant to be used in their schools. We are focusing our compliance efforts on Boom Cards in the Boom Passport program. One of the conditions of participating in the program is a commitment to making your Boom Cards accessible.
The bad news—the schools that have contacted us have put us on their accessibility failed list because insufficient Boom Cards are accessible. The GREAT news—they have given us all a one-year grace period to make adequate progress towards compliance. During the grace period, those schools can continue to purchase Boom Cards. When the grace period ends, teachers at those schools can no longer purchase non-compliant Boom Cards.
We recognize that many have used platform tools to make your decks accessible and to conform to UDL. Unfortunately, the schools have very specific checkboxes around alt text and captions that need to be checked for Boom Cards to pass their review criteria.
Between now and about March of 2025, we be taking these steps to address their concerns in this order:
- Providing training on how to make Boom Cards accessible,
- Adding metadata that shows which Boom Cards are compliant,
- Automatically removing individual Boom Cards from the Passport program that do not meet the compliance standard. (Editor’s Note: The requirement for Premier Publishers has been relaxed. Please see the most up-to-date requirements here.)
We want to assist you in bringing your activities into compliance. It’s a big undertaking, so we plan to work with you as you build out new curriculum and materials. Within the next year, we hope to see all new resources published to the Boom Store either optimized for accessibility or opted out for legitimate reasons (more on that below).
After you have mastered designing with accessibility in mind, you can go back through older materials to optimize them. We suggest that you start with your best-selling resources first and always reach out with any questions. We are here to help.
Note: You will not be required to make private resources accessible before publishing; however, we encourage all educators to consider best practices before developing new curricula.
Resources For You
We will be publishing an accessibility series on this blog.
July 7 – Accessibility 101– This article will provide the basics on how to optimize z-order and how to add accessibility text to most Boom Cards. We will also provide videos for multi-media learning.
August 7 – Accessibility 201– This article will provide advice about difficult use-cases, such as flattened background images.
We also recommend using the Creating Boom Cards Facebook group to post your trickiest questions, and we will try to answer them or design new tools to support your accessibility journey.
Here are some helpful links that will enable you to audit your materials:
- Alt text viewer (This extension is for Chrome, but most browsers will have similar resources.)
- Check color contrast
- Screen reader (Mac)
- Screen reader (PC)
- Basics of Tab Navigation
Timeline
Currently, all Boom users will see a reminder message when they go to publish a deck. This message will appear only if you have alt text missing from elements within your deck. You will still be able to publish without making changes.
We will hold the next webinar on this topic on July 15. Register here. In that session, we will introduce you to some of the new tools we have developed in response to your wonderful questions at the last webinar.
Within the next few months, we will be rolling out new Boom Studio tools to make labeling alt text easier than ever, especially across a large catalog of content.
By the end of the summer, new decks will need to be optimized for accessibility to be published to the Boom Store. Either all required elements within the deck should be labeled with alt text, or you will need to indicate that the deck has limited use. For example, a flashlight search game does not make sense with visual alt text since it is not appropriate for a student with a visual impairment nor playable without the flashlight visual element. Neither is a musical pitch deck appropriate for deaf students. We will provide opt-out tools well in advance of making accessibility text mandatory for all new decks.
We will provide accessibility badges to Boom Store and Studio pages. Publishers will be able to earn a badge for visual, auditory, or limited motor skills. It is not necessary for all decks to serve all needs, but UDL should be the guiding principle behind your improvements. When in doubt, be gracious and include more supports.
Since we already have Boom Passport school districts demanding accessible content, we’re asking Premier Publishers to optimize content by June 2025. Content that is not optimized by that date will be pulled from the catalog. Our staff will be available to advise and provide support throughout the year to ensure this deadline is achievable. We are taking a collaborative approach and have already started making new Boom Studio tools based on your feedback.
Thank you for your commitment to students and educators. We look forward to working with you to improve accessibility across the Boom marketplace and platform!
Please post questions to Creating Boom Cards group so all educators who make Boom Cards—whether they sell them or not—can all benefit from shared knowledge. If you don’t use Facebook, you can direct questions to help@boomlearning.com.
