2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background:
Students with disabilities may experience a myriad of challenges while navigating their undergraduate engineering studies. These challenges could be structural, such as difficulties accessing classrooms, labs, accommodations, or study materials. The experiences may also be attitudinal, such as the burden of disclosure, discrimination, stigmatization, and other exclusionary attitudes from peers and instructors. Studies suggest that some of these forms of social marginalization contribute to high attrition rates among disabled students in undergraduate engineering.
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) 3.0 framework offers a promising pedagogical approach that could mitigate these challenges. The framework leverages three guiding principles, Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression, to address the challenges of bias and exclusion for all learners.

Purpose and Research Questions:
This scoping literature review (ScLR) gathers and synthesizes existing related literature on the experiences of disabled students in engineering undergraduate programs. This study synthesizes existing research with the aim of revealing opportunities for UDL-based reforms that would help in fostering inclusive engineering learning environments. Specifically, we explore the following research questions (RQs):
RQ 1: What is the current landscape of literature around disabled student experiences in undergraduate engineering programs?
RQ 2: How may UDL-based strategies help in addressing and supporting disabled students in undergraduate engineering programs?

Methods:
The ScLR follows the methodology presented by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), which breaks the process into five stages: (1) identifying the research questions, (2) identifying the relevant studies, (3) study selection, (4) charting the data, and (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. These stages were performed iteratively, which allowed for researcher reflection along each stage. The study was grounded in four central inclusion criteria: (1) disabled student, (2) engineering, (3) lived experience, and (4) undergraduate. The database search was conducted in September 2024 and resulted in 4,646 publications. 41 remained after completing the three screening cycles. In the final round, papers were grouped into categories according to UDL principles of Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression. Any papers that did not squarely fit into any of these categories were grouped separately.

Potential Implications:
Mapping disabled students’ experiences to UDL methods may inform instructors in course enhancement strategies to make their classes more inclusive. The ScLR will also highlight the need to integrate empathy and proactive support in engineering culture among students and instructors. This will inform institutions on better ways to communicate and implement accommodation services for disabled students. Identified gaps in the literature will guide future research and help expand work on the application of UDL for more equitable learning environments.