Quick lesson, about 10 minutes

Design with the community, from the start

A short, hands-on review of how to center people with disabilities in the design of courses, tools, and human-centered AI.

0 of 3 activities finished

Step 1

Two ideas to know

About 2 minutes

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is a partnership approach. Community members, organizations, and researchers share decisions in every phase of the work (Israel et al., 1998). The idea behind it is simple. The people most affected by a problem are the most qualified to help solve it.

Shift left is a term from software development. It means moving the checks that usually happen at the end of a process to the very start, when decisions are still open. Here, it means community voice comes before the first design decision.

Where UDL fits. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) plans for learner differences from the beginning, so fewer fixes are needed later (Evmenova et al., 2024; Moriña et al., 2025). Without the community in the room, UDL is still a designer's best guess about who the learner is. CBPR turns the guess into a conversation.

Activity 1. Put the five stages in order

This lesson groups CBPR into five stages, adapted from Israel et al. (1998) and Nicolaidis et al. (2011). Use the Up and Down buttons to place them from first to last. Then select Check my order.

    Step 2

    Meet Jordan

    About 2 minutes

    Jordan is an instructional designer at a university. For eight months, Jordan redesigned a required online onboarding course that had been flagged as inaccessible. Every image got alt text. Every video got captions. Every PDF was properly structured. Jordan followed the UDL Guidelines 3.0 and WCAG 2.2, and the course passed the accessibility audit.

    Three weeks after launch, the Disability Resource Center reached out. Several students had already stopped engaging.

    No disabled student, family member, or self-advocate was in the room when the course was designed. Lived experience was the last thing consulted, when it could have been the first.

    Activity 2. Check your understanding

    Choose one answer for each question. Feedback appears right away, and you can change your answer.

    Step 3

    Activity 3. Build your roadmap

    About 5 minutes

    You are Jordan, starting over. Pick one thing you are building right now. It can be a course, a program, a training, a tool, or a policy. Any size works. Write one action for each stage.

    Before any design decision is made

    Who from the disability community belongs at the table to help define what you are building and why? What is the first question you would ask them?

    UDL connection. The UDL Design Cycle begins by considering learner variability (Evmenova et al., 2024). CBPR adds the step of asking.

    Throughout, while you are building

    When do you return to that community while the design can still change? Does their feedback lead to a real change, or only a note in a file?

    UDL connection. UDL 3.0 calls for collaboration and action-oriented feedback (Considerations 8.3 and 8.5; CAST, 2024). CBPR is a cyclical, iterative process (Israel et al., 1998).

    After, when the experience ends

    How does the community learn what their voice changed? What do you write down and carry into your next design cycle?

    UDL connection. UDL 3.0 names individual and collective reflection as a design consideration (Consideration 9.3; CAST, 2024).

    One idea to take with you

    A checklist tells you if a design meets the standard. The community tells you if it works. Jordan met the standard, and the course still left students out.

    Picture the person you most want your work to reach. Did they help you design it?

    Sources

    CAST. (2024). Universal Design for Learning guidelines version 3.0. https://udlguidelines.cast.org

    Evmenova, A. S., Hollingshead, A., Lowrey, K. A., Rao, K., & Williams, L. D. (2024). Designing for diversity and inclusion: UDL-based strategies for college courses. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 37(1), 81–88.

    Gravel, J. W., Tucker-Smith, N., Rose, D. H., Fornauf, B., Hughes, M. M., Lester, L., Rao, K., Singer, S., & Waitoller, F. R. (2026). UDL Guidelines 3.0: A community-driven, research-based process toward fulfilling the promise of Universal Design for Learning. International Journal for Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning, 1(2), 44–62.

    Israel, B. A., Schulz, A. J., Parker, E. A., & Becker, A. B. (1998). Review of community-based research: Assessing partnership approaches to improve public health. Annual Review of Public Health, 19, 173–202. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.19.1.173

    Moriña, A., Carballo, R., & Doménech, A. (2025). Transforming higher education: A systematic review of faculty training in UDL and its benefits. Teaching in Higher Education, 30(7), 1722–1739. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2025.2465994

    Nicolaidis, C., Raymaker, D., McDonald, K., Dern, S., Ashkenazy, E., Boisclair, C., Robertson, S., & Baggs, A. (2011). Collaboration strategies in nontraditional community-based participatory research partnerships: Lessons from an academic–community partnership with autistic self-advocates. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, 5(2), 143–150. https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2011.0022