Designing high-quality ed tech tools requires more than good intentions—it requires clear standards, user-centered practice and practical approaches to put them into action. Accessibility and inclusion are not features to layer on at the end; they are foundational to building products that truly work for diverse learners.
This guide focuses on the standards, implementation tools, and institutional readiness practices that ensure products are not only well-designed but technically accessible, compliant, and ready for adoption.
If you’re looking for design practices—including personas, journey mapping, usability testing, and applying UDL during the design process—see our post on User-Centered Design Practices for Impactful EdTech.
Start Here: Core Standards That Should Shape All Design Decisions
Before diving into tools and examples, teams should ground their work in a shared set of foundational standards. These serve as the non-negotiable baseline for inclusive, scalable products.
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Framework: The primary pedagogical framework for designing learning experiences that account for learner variability from the start. UDL helps ensure that learners can engage with, understand, and act on learning experiences in multiple, flexible ways. It is increasingly expected as a baseline standard.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): The global technical standard defining how to make digital content accessible to people with disabilities. WCAG forms the basis for most legal and procurement requirements.
Learn: Build Foundational Knowledge
These resources build shared understanding of why accessibility matters, common barriers learners face, and how inclusive design improves outcomes for all users.
- Accessibility Basics Course: A beginner-friendly introduction to digital accessibility concepts, common user barriers, and why designing for inclusion leads to better user experiences.
- AEM Center: A comprehensive hub of resources to help ensure learning materials are accessible and usable for learners with disabilities across K–12 and postsecondary environments.
- UDL on Campus: Evidence-based strategies and implementation guidance for applying Universal Design for Learning within higher education courses, media and materials, and policy.
Apply: Put Accessibility & User-Centered Design Into Practice
This section focuses on moving from standards and principles into day-to-day product execution and institutional readiness. These tools help translate accessibility and user-centered design into real product decisions across strategy, design, testing, and readiness.
- User-Centered Design & Discovery Toolkit: A practical package of worksheets designed to help teams define product vision and strategy, understand their users, shape usability, plan testing, and meet compliance requirements.
- Additional context and guidance on these topics can be found in this slide deck, which was developed by experts at Axim Collaborative.
- CAST Figuration: An open-source package of CSS and Javascript that can be used as a starting point for building accessible, cross-device, interactive websites.
- VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template): A standardized accessibility report used by institutions to evaluate whether a product meets accessibility requirements. Completing a VPAT is often essential for procurement and institutional adoption.
Together, these tools help teams bridge the gap between design intent, technical implementation, and market readiness.
Explore: See Inclusive Design in Practice
AccessATE supports the work of National Science Foundation-funded Advanced Technological Education (ATE) projects to design and improve accessible instructional materials and learning activities. Explore their collection of case studies demonstrating how accessibility principles and UDL are applied in real curriculum design and instructional materials. These examples help teams see how inclusive design decisions translate into actual learning experiences, not just theory or compliance documentation.
As you apply these standards and tools, pairing them with the user-centered practices outlined here will help ensure your products are not only compliant, but genuinely intuitive and empowering for the learners you serve.
