Key Principles of Universal Design

In Fall 2024, I wrote a four a four week series for the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, this series focused on supporting educators preparing for the new school year by helping them learn about and implement free-to-low cost universal design practices in their classrooms.

Article 1: The Key Principles of Universal Design

Every school year, thousands of students are impacted by the harmful practices of seclusion, restraint, and punitive discipline in schools. Research shows that these practices disproportionately affect neurodivergent and BIPOC students along with those with trauma histories. 

Punitive discipline practices can destroy a student’s experience of safety at school, damage relationships with educators, and exacerbate challenging behaviors. They rarely address the root causes of students’ behaviors or lead to proactive practices that support nervous system regulation and relationship repair.

As an educator, you may not control your school’s discipline policies, but you do have some control over how you set up your classroom. Whether you’re planning out your classroom today or the night before your first professional development day, one critical decision you will make is how to arrange your physical space. To support your students in accessing the classroom without barriers, allowing them the opportunity to fully engage in your space without feeling othered, you might consider a concept called ‘Universal Design.’

It’s understandable that thinking about how to make a space ‘as inclusive and accessible as possible’ could sound overwhelming! Never fear, though; there is already a set of useful principles that can guide you as you design your classroom space! I’d like to introduce you to ‘Universal Design (UD),’ a set of concrete principles and practices that allow individuals designing physical spaces and products to proactively decide to make them as inclusive and accessible as possible. 

Schools are often already designed with physical accessibility in mind and guided by The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), so the examples below are examples that you may already see as you wander the halls of your school building. 

Schools are not often, however, designed inclusively for nervous system regulation. 

This isn’t your fault. It’s also not your fault if you feel like you have the sole responsibility to help regulate the nervous systems of your 20-30 students, with little support from the administration or those in the central office.