Accessible By Default

Hey 👋

Welcome to April. Today, one final snack on effective inclusion before I down tools for a couple of weeks over Easter.

Big idea 🍉

One of the most effective ways to drive effective inclusion is to make our teaching ‘accessible by default’.

‘Accessible design’ is a well-established concept in other sectors. Ramps in buildings, braille in lifts, websites that work with screen readers—these all help more people access what's already there. Classrooms should be no different.

Accessible design in teaching means making lessons as usable as possible from the outset, as often as possible, for as wide a range of students as possible. Then, only adapting further when necessary—and in the lightest-touch way (rather than leaning into personalisation, such as with UDL).

When teaching isn’t accessible, students with special educational needs often expend huge effort just to keep up, often leading to frustration, disengagement, and a widening achievement gap. Accessible lessons are perceivable, understandable, and doable by all. This means considering things like:

• What fonts and font sizes we use

• How we use colour and contrast

• How our communication influences cognitive load

• The consistency/predictability of our instruction, and much more…

When we use accessible design, it reduces label backfire, avoids diagnostic overshadowing, and eases the adaptation burden on teachers. Plus, it tends to benefit everyone else too… tools to help a dyslexic student decode text, or an autistic student follow instructions, often turn out to be good for the whole class—just like captions and voice assistants help us all outside school.

Accessible design isn’t a checkbox—it’s a mindset. It means growing our knowledge (eg. what is ‘white space’?), building empathy into planning (can someone who is colour-blind read this?), and getting feedback (can you see this from the back?).

By making our lessons accessible by default, we shift towards a proactive, preventative approach rather than a reactive one. This reduces the need for individual adaptations, makes diversity the norm, and helps all students engage with our teaching from the word GO.

🎓 For more, check out this paper on accessible instruction.

⭐️ And grab your FREE POSTER on accessible design in the classroom.

Summary

• Accessible design is about making our lessons perceivable, understandable, and doable by as many students as possible.

• It means considering things like fonts, colour, contrast, consistency and much more, right from the start.

• When we make our lessons ‘accessible by default’, it reduces the negative effects of labels and leads to improved learning for everyone.

Little updates 🥕

• Study on written feedback → finds that many students ignore it and even misuse it (especially boys and those with low working memory/prior knowledge).

• Paper comparing handwriting vs typing → suggests that typing helps dyslexic students remember spellings and meaning better.

• Study on social inclusion → finds that positive teacher-student relationships predict higher peer acceptance & classroom inclusion.

• Plus, an updated guidance report on the effective use of teaching assistants in school from the EEF.

For tons more PDFs & more → Learn about Snacks PRO