From Deficit Model to Design Model

CAST researchers David Rose and Anne Meyer, working in the 1990s with students with disabilities, recognised that the barriers these students faced were often not inherent to the students themselves, but were embedded in the design of the curriculum, materials, and assessments. A student who could not read a printed textbook was not necessarily unable to access the content — they simply needed the content presented in a different format. This shift from a deficit model (fixing the student) to a design model (fixing the environment) was revolutionary.