Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is one of my favorite frameworks. It aligns beautifully with how I see the world: learners are different, their brains process differently, their sensory experiences shift, and their energy levels rise and fall for reasons we may never see. Designing for that variability feels like designing with empathy.
But here’s the part that doesn’t get said at PD sessions or in glossy articles:
UDL takes time.
Real time.
Hours. Days. Sometimes weeks… or more
Not because it’s complicated, but because it demands something that our systems don’t often give us the luxury of: thoughtful anticipation.
And honestly? That kind of time is scarce in education, where teachers have to fight for every minute of prep time they have, and in instructional design, where multiple projects are demanding the same bits of time and only one project will get any one given block of time.
This post is the one where I tell the truth about that.
UDL Takes Time Because Care Takes Time
One more time, louder, for the administrators who push ridiculous timelines.
UDL Takes Time Because Care Takes Time!
We love to say UDL helps all learners, and it does.
We rarely acknowledge the flip side:
Doing UDL well asks a lot from the educator or designer.
When I design a module, lesson, or training through a UDL lens, I am not simply choosing which format to offer. I’m imagining real human beings, sometimes ones I’ll never meet, and always ones who think differently than I, and asking questions like:
- Will this color palette work for someone who is color-blind or experiencing migraine aura?
- Does this workflow assume more executive function capacity than some learners have today?
- Would someone who processes language differently be able to follow my instructions?
- Are my assessment options equitable or simply decorative?
- How will a learner with aphantasia process this visual? (Okay, this one is me.)
These are not quick questions.
And they rarely have quick answers.
The work of UDL is not hard.
But it is slow.
And slow is often what gets cut first.
The Emotional Labor Nobody Talks About
There is a kind of vulnerability required in UDL.
Not from the learners but from the designer.
UDL forces me to confront uncomfortable truths:
- I have created barriers without meaning to.
- I have made assumptions about ability, perception, and cognition.
- I have expected learners to disclose needs they may not have language for.
- I have relied on “standard” formats that serve some but exclude others.
- I have sometimes designed for the average learner at the cost of the uncommon one.
It’s humbling.
It’s uncomfortable.
But it’s also the most honest design work I do.
UDL is reflective practice in disguise.
It demands an internal audit of bias, of habits, of shortcuts, of assumptions that felt harmless until they weren’t.
This emotional labor is real, and it is invisible.
And yes… it takes time.
The Practical Labor Takes Even Longer
Let’s talk about the part we all secretly dread: the sheer number of hours UDL adds to a project.
Here is what “doing UDL well” can look like behind the scenes:
- Building captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions
- Selecting or creating color-blind-friendly palettes
- Writing meaningful alt-text (that’s an art, not a button click)
- Designing assessment options that measure the same learning target
- Simplifying navigation within the learning environment and reducing cognitive load
- Providing vocabulary in multiple accessible formats
- Creating scaffolds for executive function
- Testing accessibility across multiple devices and visual modes
- Revising microcopy to reduce ambiguity
- Creating multiple pathways for engagement that are all equally valid
None of this is copy-paste work.
It is a layered, intentional, iterative design.
It’s also usually invisible to everyone except the person doing the designing.
The Western Governors University (WGU) Example: What Happens When an Institution Invests in UDL
When I was a student at WGU, I remember thinking:
“Wow… this is what UDL looks like when an entire organization commits to it.”
Every article had audio.
Every video had captions and transcripts.
Many assignments came with genuine choice.
Accessibility wasn’t special; it was standard.
This didn’t happen because someone created a UDL checklist.
It happened because the institution invested time, people, and resources.
And that’s the truth:
UDL scales beautifully when institutions support it.
It becomes exhausting when individuals must carry it alone.
The Time Cost Is the Equity Work
There’s a line I keep coming back to in my own design practice:
UDL done well takes time,
but UDL done poorly takes time away from learners.
When I don’t caption a video, the learner must pause, rewind, struggle, and guess.
When I don’t provide alternative formats, the learner must work harder to decode the medium before getting to the content.
When I don’t structure an assessment with options, learners with cognitive or sensory differences must mask or stretch beyond their actual capacity.
The time I save becomes their burden.
That realization is what keeps me committed, even when I’m exhausted and behind and wishing things could magically caption themselves.
(And yes, AI helps. But AI is a tool, a starting point, not a gold standard.)
A Small, Honest Case Study: The Color Blindness Empathy Module
Let me tell you about a project I’m working on right now.
What I thought would be a three or four-hour build turned into twenty.
Why?
Because empathy-focused UDL requires:
- More thoughtful scenario writing
- More careful color testing
- More visual alternatives
- More navigation clarity
- More attention to microcopy
- More authentic assessment choices
- So much searching through Storyline settings to disable accessibility labels on every non-essential object. (Check out this LinkedIn post by Jacob Wood).
Every “quick fix” unraveled into a deeper design question.
Every “simple decision” required revisiting assumptions.
This is the work.
This is the care.
This is the time.
UDL Is Worth It. And It’s Okay to Admit It’s Hard
This post is not meant to discourage anyone. It’s meant to acknowledge something real:
We cannot advocate for UDL without acknowledging the labor it requires.
And we cannot sustain UDL without systems that support that labor.
UDL is not magical.
It is intentional, reflective, human design work.
It makes the learning experience better for every learner, especially the ones who never speak up about their struggles.
It makes our work more honest, more ethical, and more aligned with how brains actually function.
And yes… it takes time.
Time that is worth giving.
Time that should be recognized.
Time that should be shared.
Time that should be protected.
The outcome is worth that time.
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