Abstract

Communication and Writing centers (CWCs) have a unique role in helping clients with a variety of needs, abilities, and challenges (sometimes disability-related, often not). CWCs, known for attending to speaking and writing practices, continue to expand and occupy rhetorical spaces in higher education. Yet, despite their collaborative ethos, CWCs often reproduce narrow notions of competence through standards that prioritize able-bodied and neurotypical norms. This article offers Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a flexible pedagogical framework to help CWC consultants better address client and session variability. This study highlights the need for UDL by drawing from theories of embodiment, performativity, and multiliteracy to challenge normative expectations rooted in able-bodied assumptions of communicative competence. It overviews the most recent update, UDL 3.0, and highlights the way it prioritizes client agency over session goals. Ultimately, this article positions UDL as a living framework for ongoing conversations about rhetorical access, inclusive pedagogy, and multimodal communication. Through practical strategies and reflective heuristics, this study demonstrates how consultants can operationalize UDL to foster equitable, multimodal, and justice-oriented sessions and cultivate spaces of rhetorical belonging where communicators and writers are affirmed as co-creators in the rhetorical process.

Keywords: Universal Design for Learning (UDL), disability, tips and tools, embodiment, multiliteracies

How to Cite:

Guajardo, S. M. & Radtke, A. M., (2025) “    Flexible Agency: Advancing Inclusive Pedagogies through Universal Design for Learning (UDL)  ”, Communication Center Journal 11(1). doi: https://doi.org//ccj.2896