In this post, our CEO, Daniel Goerz, shares the story that sparked the UDL Classroom* project and the deeper mission driving our work. It’s a personal look at the challenges, conversations, and inspiration that shaped the vision for a more inclusive classroom.

Where It Started

Over a decade ago, I was working in an accessibility services department. Like many people in the field, I was deeply aware of the limitations of the systems we worked in, particularly the medical model of accommodation. Too many students fell through the cracks. Some didn’t qualify for services. Others never registered at all.

My director at the time gave us an unusual challenge: work ourselves out of a job. It wasn’t about eliminating support, it was about eliminating the need for students to prove they deserved help. We began experimenting:

• Offering professional notes to all students in a class
• Encouraging the exam centre to support every learner, not just those with documentation
• Embedding ourselves into the library, helping anyone who needed learning strategies or tech support, not just those on file with our office

This mindset shift, centred around Universal Design for Learning (UDL), planted a seed that’s still growing in education today and is deeply rooted in the design of Habitat Learns’ ecosystem of products and services.

Technology Meets a Movement

In 2019, our company (then called Note Taking Express) moved to Toronto. We provided human-written notes for students with disabilities who couldn’t take their own. It was a simple, affordable service.

But even back then, we knew: good notes help everyone. Students benefit from comparing their notes to a clean, structured version written by a professional. It reduces stress, improves retention, and levels the playing field. So the question became: Why not give these notes to everyone in a class?

The First UDL Classroom Pilot: Mohawk College

That philosophy led to our first prototype of the UDL Classroom, piloted at Mohawk College.

The idea was simple: provide a shared set of professional notes to all students in a class, regardless of accommodation status. We partnered with an instructor in a short-term apprenticeship program and installed a device we called the Nbot (N for notes). It featured a camera and microphone that a live note taker could control remotely to view the whiteboards from all angles.

The result? Notes were written live and shared with every student, not just those with accommodations. Instructors received both the recording and the notes, which they could use to support the entire class.

That first pilot showed us what was possible, and it caught the attention of other colleges. George Brown College wanted to run a similar pilot. We even applied for a large federal grant to expand the model across different classroom environments, from industrial kitchens to dental labs. Then… COVID hit.

A Pandemic Silver Lining

While COVID-19 paused many of our plans, it also changed something major: attitudes around classroom recording.

Suddenly, cameras weren’t a controversial idea; they were essential. Hybrid learning opened new doors, and soon, all five of Toronto’s major colleges (George Brown, Humber, Seneca, Centennial, and Sheridan) were interested in the concept of a shared support model and remote attendance.

We didn’t win the initial large grant, but we did receive a different federal grant to help keep the momentum going. Feedback from those early pilots helped us refine our technology. For example, we learned the Nbot’s moving camera head, while clever, was distracting in real classrooms. And noisy environments like kitchens were tough for remote note takers. So, we took a step back and prepared for continued innovation.

Expanding the Vision: From Notes to a Full UDL Ecosystem

As we reviewed everything we’d learned, we knew the next version of the UDL Classroom had to go beyond note-taking. We needed to create a smart, accessible environment that could support a wide range of services used by students with disabilities, from captioning to lecture capture to human support, and still be useful to all learners.

Too often, students with disabilities are expected to navigate a patchwork of different software tools just to access the same content as their peers. This can create more barriers, not fewer. Our vision was to design a unified, seamless solution, one that every student could use, but that was intentionally built with inclusive design at its core. Something that didn’t feel like an accommodation, because it simply worked for all learners.

But we also had to make it work within real campus constraints:

• Could it connect to college Wi-Fi securely? (This is more complicated than you might think)
• Could it store and process data locally for privacy and speed?
• Could it be managed by schools without overburdening their teams?

That’s when we deepened our partnership with Humber Polytechnic. This time, we partnered with Humber’s Accessible Media department, which focuses on making lectures universally accessible through a mix of human and AI-powered tools. We knew we were aligned. So we committed to co-building a solution.

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The Apple Ecosystem: A natural Fit

When it came to finding a technology to bring unique capabilities to life, Apple's values reflected our own values of security, accessibility, and intuitive design, making Apple technologies an obvious choice.

The Apple ecosystem gives us the power to build a secure, privacy-first, and high-performance experience that institutions could trust. This partnership is helping us think bigger! Not just about what’s possible, but what’s sustainable for real classrooms.

Giving Back to the Learning Community

At Habitat Learn, we don’t believe education is just about content; it’s about community. So it was important that our solution didn’t just support learners, it created opportunities for them to be part of the solution.

In 2024/2025, we:

• Hired our first student co-op for this project through Humber to work on the UDL Classroom.
• Launched a micro-credential course at Humber on how to become a captioner and note taker

We still believe that AI can do a lot, but humans are essential. From editing transcripts to writing notes or helping deploy new devices, real people are what make this ecosystem work.

If you’re working on similar challenges, exploring inclusive design on your campus, or simply curious about how this all comes together, we’d love to connect. This is a shared journey, and we’re excited to keep learning together.

Thanks for being part of the journey!

_{*Our UDL classroom technology has patents granted and pending in several jurisdictions.}

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