These two approaches are often confused, but the distinction matters for how a teacher plans a session.
Inclusive teaching
Inclusive teaching is planned for a wide range of learners from the beginning, applied to everyone in the room without requiring any individual disclosure or request. Examples include accessible slides, a clear lesson structure, captions on video content, materials shared in advance, multiple participation methods, flexible learning activities, plain language, and accessible online content. None of these require knowing anything about any specific student — they are simply better default design.
Individual reasonable adjustments
Reasonable adjustments are specific changes made for one particular student, agreed because general inclusive design does not, on its own, fully remove a barrier that student faces. Examples include extra assessment time, an interpreter, a reader or scribe, a specialised format, an individual deadline adjustment, a modified placement task, or a specific seating arrangement. These require knowing something about the individual student, typically through a formal support agreement or a direct conversation.
Teachers should use both approaches, and should not treat one as a substitute for the other. Good inclusive design reduces how many individual adjustments are needed — a course that already provides captioned video, for instance, removes the need for a deaf student to specifically request captioning — but it does not eliminate the need for individual adjustment entirely. Some barriers are genuinely individual, and no amount of universal design will remove the need, for example, for an interpreter booked for a specific student in a specific session.
A useful test when planning a session: ask first 'what could I build in for everyone, without knowing who is in the room?' and only then ask 'what does this specific student, who I do know about, additionally need?' Answering the first question well makes the second question smaller and more manageable.