Providing New Access to the General Curriculum

students to have access to the general curriculum—especially those who have formerly been limited to special education curriculums? How can students effectively participate and make progress in the general curriculum? What new tools, methods, and approaches are needed—and are being implemented? In our view, the answers to these questions depend on changes that we must make in the general curriculum to provide such access and participation. In so doing, we will create a curriculum that is better not just for students with disabilities but for all students. This article examines what we mean by access, participation, and progress in the general education curriculum and suggests a new framework for curriculum reform that holds promise for students with disabilities, in particular, and raises countless possibilities for all students. The article presents the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework for curriculum reform that takes advantage of new media and new technologies for learning (Hitchcock, Meyer, Rose Rose see box, “UDL Curriculum in a Nutshell”).