Material Detail

For content and potential effectiveness, this book earns five stars. It provides valuable information about the need, characteristics, and application of universal design. A thorough exploration of the framework, and the research behind it, provides instructors and instructional designers good foundational knowledge for their course design. Despite the overall strength of the book, a slight deficiency in content deserves mentioning. In the first two case studies, the instructions and the value of the exercises are unclear. If the first two case studies were to follow the formatting of later case studies, the issue would be resolved. This book’s usability could be improved by improving navigation options. Adding the navigational links of "Previous" and "Next” at the bottom of each page would allow the user to effortlessly “turn the page” to the next page of content. Currently, to advance to the next page, the reader must scroll up, click Contents, scroll down the contents to find the next page, and then click on the page. This process is repeated about 50 times to read the entire book. To complicate navigation further, the contents menu contains three 1.1’s, three 1.2’s, and so on. Renumbering to have the first digit represent its section exclusively would aid navigation. Overall, this book provides valuable, practical information about Universal Design for Learning.