Compared to their peers without disabilities, students with disabilities can experience unique, additional barriers to learning in online learning environments (Rao et al., 2021; UNESCO, 2021). Without knowing the barriers that students may face in online learning, teachers have an ethical responsibility to design and deliver inclusive online lessons, especially considering the likelihood that online instruction will become more commonplace in a post-pandemic world.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is “a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn” (CAST, 2018) by providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. This poster presentation will describe the iterative application of UDL Guidelines to an online English Medium Instruction course at a private university in Tokyo in the 2020 and 2021 academic years. This description will include the initial application of the UDL Guidelines, responses from a student survey on the efficacy of inclusive design choices, and subsequent modifications made to course and lesson delivery for greater inclusivity. Participants will leave with a better understanding of how to apply the UDL Guidelines in their own online teaching.