Author: Jesse Rice-Evans

This post contains announcements and details of past UDL Collaborative events

Please join us for our next meeting of the school’s UDL Collaborative on Wednesday, February 19 from 2-3 pm ET. Register here.

This month, we’ll explore another of the UDL guidelines, discuss plans for accessible and inclusive spring projects, and hear from a UDL Collaborative member about one of their projects.

Also, save the dates for our future meetings in the spring semester:

Friday, March 21st at 12:00pm – Register Here

Wednesday, April 23rd at 2:00pm – Register Here

Thursday, May 15th at 12:00pm – Register Here

CUNY-wide UDL Collaborative

For context, our Community of Practice is part of the broader UDL Collaborative, an initiative created by the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion to foster accessibility and active learning across all CUNY campuses. To support this effort, the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy is offering a year-long asynchronous training course on UDL guidelines, for which you can register here. 

This post contains announcements and details of past UDL Collaborative events

Dear SPS community,

As we look ahead to the New Year, we want to take a moment to express our heartfelt gratitude for your engagement in and contributions to our school’s Universal Design in Learning (UDL) Collaborative. Your insights and participation in our past meetings have created a rich, supportive space for sharing and learning. Thank you for being an integral part of this growing community!

January 2025 Meeting

Please join us at our first meeting in the new year, scheduled for Monday, January 13 from 12.30-1.30pm ET. All faculty and staff are welcome. Please register here, thank you!

Whether you’re a regular attendee or have never joined us before, we’d love to have you participate. This January meeting will be an opportunity to reconnect, share ideas, and continue fostering our collective commitment to Universal Design for Learning.

Help us plan future meetings

We’ve created a short survey to gather your input on two important items:

1. Sharing an Ongoing Project or Idea: We’d love to hear if you’re interested in sharing an ongoing project, artifact, or idea at a future UDL Collaborative meeting.See the survey for more details.
2. Availability for Future Meetings: Please let us know your availability for upcoming UDL Collaborative meetings so we can schedule at times that work best for everyone.

We look forward to hearing from you on this form, and appreciate your input!

✨ Holiday-themed UDL Tip ✨

As we deck our halls with red and green, let’s keep our holiday spirit bright AND accessible! Those festive colors can be tricky for folks with color blindness to distinguish when used as text or background colors.

Red-green color blindness, a common variation in color vision, can make it challenging for some users to distinguish between these colors, especially when they are placed next to each other or lack sufficient contrast. To support accessibility, avoid relying on color alone to convey meaning in your emails or documents, and use bold or italics instead.

Additionally, maintain adequate color contrast between text and backgrounds to enhance readability for individuals with low vision or other visual impairments. Contrast-checking tools like those offered by WebAIM and WCAG can help ensure your materials meet accessibility standards.

We’re excited about the opportunities this New Year brings and grateful to have such a dedicated and inspiring community. We hope to see you at our January meeting!

Warm regards,

Brian Le Lay, Antonia Levy, and Amarna Williams 

Facilitators, UDL Collaborative

This post contains announcements and details of past UDL Collaborative events

First of all, thank you to everyone who joined our November meeting last week! We appreciate you taking the time, and are grateful for your questions, ideas, and feedback. 

Save the date for our January 2025 meeting!

As mentioned at the meeting, with December being such a busy month including holiday preparations, celebrations, and final grades, we decided to skip our monthly meeting. In its place, we’ll be in touch with a few (festive!) UDL tips, resources, and ideas to keep our momentum going.

And please join us for our first meeting in the new year scheduled for Monday, January 13 from 12.30-1.30pm ET. All faculty and staff are welcome. Please register here, thank you!

Resource Links

See below for a list of resources our team and other participants had shared in the last meeting chat:

1. UDL Guidelines by CAST. 
2. Direct link to Guideline 2: Language and Symbols, which we covered in more detail during our meeting. 
3. Making Web Content Digestible via bite, snack, and meal metaphors.
4. Alt-Text as Poetry.
5. Accessible Syllabus Project website. 
6. Image section of the SPS Accessibility Toolkit. We encourage you to browse through the Toolkit (via Content in the upper right, or by clicking forward or backward in the blue bar at the bottom of the page) for more practical accessibility tips and how-to’s! 
7. Future Topics Mentimeter – we’ve left this poll open so please feel free to add more ideas via the link!

Also, re-sharing from our last meeting:

• Quick guide for creating accessible Word documents (PDF)
• Checklist for accessible Word Documents (PDF)

CUNY UDL Collaborative

We forgot to mention this during our meeting… For context, our Community of Practice is part of the broader UDL Collaborative, an initiative created by the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion to foster accessibility and active learning across all CUNY campuses. To support this effort, the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy is offering a year-long asynchronous training course on UDL guidelines, for which you can register here. 

This post contains content from past UDL Collaborative events

Dear colleagues,

First of all, thank you to everyone who joined our inaugural meeting last week! We appreciate you taking the time, and are grateful for your questions, ideas, and feedback. What an amazing start for our UDL Collaborative at the school!

November Meeting

Our November meeting is scheduled for Friday, November 22 from 12-1pm ET. All faculty and staff are welcome. Please register here, thank you!

We are planning to continue our discussions about UDL efforts at the school, share more practical accessibility tips. More details to come soon!

Resource Links

As mentioned during our meeting, we wanted to share the following resources:

• Mentimeter slides:
  • Question 1: Describe a situation, either at work or in an educational setting, that felt inaccessible to you?
  • Question 2: What opportunities and challenges do you see for UDL at our school?
  • Question 3: Which topics would you like to discuss in our future CoP Meetings?
• UDL Guidelines by CAST
• Quick guide for creating accessible Word documents (PDF)
• Checklist for accessible Word Documents (PDF)

This post contains announcements and details of past UDL Collaborative events

We’re excited to announce the launch of the Accessibility & Inclusion Community of Practice for faculty and staff at CUNY SPS, which is part of the broader Universal Design for Learning (UDL) initiative by the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion.

Join us for our inaugural meeting on October 30th at 12pm ET via Zoom, featuring quick, actionable tips for creating accessible documents and an open forum for your questions and ideas. Register here.  

This meeting marks the beginning of a monthly series offered for faculty and staff to learn about accessibility and Universal Design in Learning (UDL) principles, share implementation ideas and challenges, and learn about best practices.