The curb-cut effect is the way that changes made to benefit marginalized people also benefits everyone else (Sheridan, 2021).
Within education, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a instructional design strategy that prioritizes accessibility. UDL originated from a disability justice lens, and some second language writing scholars (Harrison, 2017, p. 191) have argued that the origins of UDL would imply “second language students have a deficit to overcome” largely because mainstream discourse on disability is deficit-based. I would argue nearly any attempts to make higher education more accessible would lead to a curb-cut effect and not necessarily prevent any asset-based mindset towards students.
For example, the primary goal of closed captioning on videos is to provide support to the Deaf or hard of hearing. This does not stop other people from getting use out of the videos, and in fact, watching videos with subtitles can have a number of useful benefits.
This effect does not produce benefits for all people in all cases, however, as there are times when Efforts to support one group of students can further marginalize others.