Conference Agenda

Access to inclusive and accessible teaching and learning materials is a prerequisite for equitable participation in education for learners with and without disabilities (UN 2008, Art. 24). In parallel with ongoing digitalisation processes, digital textbooks are increasingly used in European school systems and are often associated with enhanced learning opportunities through multimodality, interactivity, and individualization (Totter et al., 2023). However, these benefits can only be realised by all learners - particularly students with disabilities - if digital textbooks are designed to be consistently accessible. In addition, recent legal developments, such as the European Accessibility Act and corresponding national legislation (e. g. Germany: Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz), mandate the production and use of accessible digital educational materials (Marcus-Quinn, 2022).

Beyond technical implementation, the pedagogical and didactic design of accessible digital textbooks is of central importance. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides a well-established framework for the inclusive design of educational materials (UNICEF 2019). Originating in the United States and initially developed in the fields of architecture and product design, UDL was transferred to educational contexts in the 1980s. The framework assumes learner diversity as a starting point and aims to reduce learning barriers while maximizing educational participation for all learners (Meyer et al., 2014). UDL promotes the provision of multiple learning options aligned with learners’ individual needs and is structured around three core principles: (1) multiple means of engagement, (2) multiple means of representation, and (3) multiple means of expression (CAST 2024). These principles are directly applicable to the design of teaching and learning materials, including digital textbooks (Lanners, 2020; UNICEF, 2019; Wibowo et al., 2022).

To investigate the current state of digital textbooks in Europe, the Erasmus+ project Digital Education Material (DEM) was initiated (DEM 2026). The project consortium combined interdisciplinary expertise from schools and higher education institutions, including partners from Luxembourg (project coordination), Germany, Austria, and Italy, representing inclusive education, subject didactics (mathematics and geography), media education, and accessibility studies. Between 2023 and 2025, DEM conducted the first systematic evaluation of digital mathematics and geography textbooks used in primary and lower secondary education across four European countries. The overarching aim was to assess the quality of accessibility in existing digital textbooks and to generate sustainable impulses for future development. The project pursued three main objectives:

1. Systematic analysis of selected digital textbooks with regard to technical accessibility and subject-specific didactic quality
2. Development of a prototype for an accessible digital textbook
3. Provision of guidelines to support the sustainable production of accessible digital textbooks.

Building on the main objectives and results of the DEM project, this contribution focuses on ECER Universal Design for Learning as an important framework for the design of digital textbooks and deals with both current implementation practices and future possibilities for systematic realization.

Ageism—understood as the set of stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory behaviors directed at people on the basis of their age—is one of the most pervasive yet, paradoxically, least questioned forms of exclusion in contemporary society. It is also an intersectional phenomenon that combines with other axes of exclusion such as sexism, homophobia, and classism. The education system, through school textbooks and the hidden curriculum, functions as a powerful agent of socialization that frequently perpetuates reductionist and pathologizing visions of aging, shaping how younger generations perceive older adults and how students envision their own futures. Schools are therefore central to challenging stereotyped images of old age and fostering more inclusive and diverse representations of older people.

Ageist stereotypes vary in content and valence depending on the life domain to which they are applied, and they may differ across age groups and genders (de Paula Couto et al., 2022). Traditionally, age stereotypes have been treated as a single, predominantly negative construct; however, research shows that they are multifaceted, complex, and domain‑specific (Kornadt & Rothermund, 2011). From this perspective, it is possible to distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes (Rothermund & de Paula Couto, 2024). Descriptive stereotypes refer to attributes used to portray how older people are—whether in relation to their physical characteristics, social status, or behavior. These descriptive stereotypes may be negative, especially with regard to health (Kornadt et al., 2016) or cognitive abilities (Dorgnier et al., 2022; Levy et al., 2022), but they may also be positive, as older adults are often considered “cooperative, considerate, patient, and sociable” (Carlson et al., 2020, p. e351), in the domains of family relationships and life experience (Kornadt et al., 2016). Prescriptive stereotypes, by contrast, encompass social beliefs and expectations concerning how older people should be and how they ought to behave (Rothermund & de Paula Couto, 2024).

Likewise, employing a markedly condescending tone, simplified vocabulary, and basic grammatical structures when interacting with older adults—commonly referred to as elderspeak—devalues them by presuming lower competence and increases the likelihood that they will encounter dismissive or disrespectful attitudes. Consequently, old age is frequently stigmatized as a phase of dependency or decline, reinforced through a visual aesthetic that accentuate loneliness, exclusion, and fragility—rather than depicting older adults as integrated into the workforce and acting as fully functional members of society.

As a primary agent of socialization, the education system is not age‑neutral. Implicit representations, preconceptions, and stereotypes about aging and older people directly influence students’ education by transmitting cultural values and norms that shape intergenerational interpretations from an early age (Gutiérrez Moret & Mayordomo Rodríguez, 2019). In primary education, the textbook remains a key reference tool in the classroom; auditing the representations and imagery of older people in these materials therefore enables intervention at a crucial stage to prevent ageism and promote positive intergenerational relations.

The aim of this paper, in the framework of the Research Project PID2023-150704OB-I00: “Linguistic Ageism in Older Adults' Digital Communication: Towards a New Inclusive Language” funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation, Science and University and by ERDF, EU. is to analyze the presence of ageism in Spanish primary‑education textbooks and, on that basis, propose a set of editorial and pedagogical best practices to reduce this form of discrimination in educational contexts. To this end, we identify and quantify the presence of linguistic and visual manifestations of ageism in a representative sample of Spanish primary‑education textbooks, and we analyze the discursive and visual mechanisms that reproduce ageism in these materials, as well as the intersectionality of ageism with other forms of discrimination (sexism, homophobia, ableism, racism, classism) and the documentation of the hidden curriculum.

The practices and processes that practitioners believe will enable access to school can frequently constrain such access (Rix, 2025). It has, for instance, long been realized that even seemingly obvious and widely adopted approaches such as the use of images or simplifying language are problematic (E.g: Crisp & Sweiry, 2006). The contested nature of simplification was seen as an important area for research in the 20^th Century. For example, there were those who argued that it does not enhance comprehension, as measured by ability to answer questions, retain information over time, and recall important aspects of content (Chalke 1958; Klare 1963), whilst others claimed that simplified texts can increase comprehensibility (Tweissi 1998). The issue of language simplification has tended to focus upon adults reading a range of simplified texts; young people who are learning to read; people with English as an Additional Language (EAL); and a range of individuals with identifiable learning difficulties. The issue of images has been a separate strand of research. For example, how the use of tables and graphs can affect exploratory learning (Velic & DeCaro, 2025) and how abstract and concrete visual representations can affect science education (Zheng et al, 2022). Both simplified language and images have also been explored in connection with assessment and examinations at all levels of education.

Evidence from the United Kingdom, suggests that teachers working with a diverse and complex learning population, provide simplified language materials to their students (Barnard & Burgess, 2001; Rix, 2004, 2006), using images alongside less-complex language. They use these materials at times across the whole class and at others with a range of pupils, including those with learning difficulties and those who have EAL (Rix, 2006). A more recent study from Finland (Zi, 2021) reported text-modification strategies used by the teacher participants working with students in a second language. The desire to simplify is also encouraged through guidance on plain language and ‘good writing’ in textbooks or on websites. These often recommend writing shorter words in shorter sentences, paragraphs and sections, using only essential technical words, and positive, active, personal language. It is not uncommon for guidance to teachers to advocate readability formulas too (e.g: the Fog index, the Flesch Reading Ease index and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score) which are available within Microsoft Word, and have been recommended for decades in textbooks (eg Lewis, 1990; Ellington & Race, 1993) and more recently on websites (https://readable.com/; https://textinspector.com/).

Despite the evidence of the use of these materials, much of which is anecdotal, there is virtually no research into teacher-produced materials and how they are used in everyday classrooms. The author of this paper is one of the few researchers to have done work in this field and this was in the United Kingdom in the early 2000’s. The importance of such a potentially prevalent approach is underlined by the variability that is evident across classrooms too, with teachers often using seemingly contradictory approaches (Huang, 2021) or not sticking to their own teaching plans (Capel et al, 2019). In this context the author was very interested when he heard anecdotally that the approach and the lack of research was also evident in Norway, where he is teaching.

This paper reports on a pilot study that aims to consider:

• Do teachers in Norway use teacher-produced materials?
• Who do teachers use teacher-produced materials with?
• What form do these materials take?