Accounting on the spectrum: a framework for inclusive accounting education

Accounting educators are increasingly likely to teach autistic students, yet traditional accounting course structures may create barriers to their learning and participation. Accounting education presents those students with an accessibility paradox. The rules-based nature of accounting education emphasizes precision, pattern recognition, rule-based systems, and attention to detail, which may align with the strengths of some autistic students. However, its vast technical content, specialized terminology, and rapid transitions across topics may heighten their existing challenges with executive functioning, anxiety, sensory overload, and social interaction. This applied theoretical pedagogy paper proposes, but does not empirically test, an autism-focused framework for accounting educators grounded in the Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The paper contributes to accounting education by integrating the literature on autism, higher education, UDL, and accounting pedagogy into two faculty resource guides. The first guide maps common strengths and barriers of autistic students to accounting-specific UDL strategies. The second guide illustrates how to implement those strategies through pre-class, in-class, and post-class activities within a flipped introductory accounting course. These guides are intended to help accounting faculty reduce unnecessary barriers to students' access to accounting content, practice, feedback, and participation while preserving the rigor required of accounting programs.