Education is full of complex language. We’re here to change that!
The Language Accessibility Promise
By making the Language Accessibility Promise, your organisation commits to using clear and simple language in student-facing documents and embedding this principle in the way you communicate.
By signing up to the Language Accessibility Promise, an organisation promises to embed the following criteria:
- To communicate directly, clearly and honestly.
- To assume no prior knowledge - avoid acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations.
- To offer a range of communication formats.
- To use technical terms only when necessary.
- To show compassion, consideration and understanding of students' needs and experiences in our approach to communication.
By signing this promise, you commit to reviewing 20% of policies and student-facing documents against these criteria within 2 years, and 50% within 5 years. This is not about overnight or astronomical change!
We have worked on an understanding that every document will be updated at least once every ten years and therefore this can be done as business as usual. The idea is that this light touch approach just becomes something all staff do as standard.
Project Context
The original concept for the project was to try and make organisations more accessible for multi-lingual speakers and international students. However, it rapidly became clear that large numbers of students find that the language used by organisations, particularly in formal documents such as policies, can be very inaccessible. This led to a broadening of the project and the creation of the Language Accessibility Promise.
Benefits to your organisation
Implementing the Promise will:
- Improve access to education
- Enhance the quality of the student experience
- Improve students' sense of belonging.
Sign the Language Accessibility Promise
To sign the Language Accessibility Promise, please use your organisation’s approval process. Once you are ready to sign up, please email info@step.ac.uk.
To implement the Language Accessibility Promise and make this part of your business-as-usual plan, we recommend the following:
- Obtain formal approval within a relevant institutional committee.
- Ensure that the Promise sits within a clear area of responsibility, such as a relevant committee.
- Ensure that the criteria are included in all periodic revisions to institutional policies. The criteria are intentionally high-level, in order be adaptable to different institutional contexts. Institutions are therefore encouraged to customise or add to these criteria as they work on them in policy revision, in order to situate them in their own context.
- There are many other opportunities beyond policies to embed these criteria within academic and professional services departments, including within learning materials and institutional communications. Each institution may want to consider the scope of this work in their own context.
Supporting Resources
There are many ways to make language accessible. Every organisation is different and will implement the Language Accessibility Promise in their own way. Here are some resources which may be useful as you consider the approach that is best for your organisation:
Inclusive Language
Creating Accessible Materials
Compassionate Communication
- Academic Registrars Council - Compassionate Communication Principles
- QAA Scotland is currently undertaking a project on Compassionate Communication. Further resources will be shared on this topic as they are published.
If you know about a resource that can add value to this work but isn’t mentioned in that list, please get in touch with us at info@step.ac.uk.
Organisations that have signed the Language Accessibility Promise
- Borders College
- Dundee and Angus College
- North East Scotland College
- The Open University in Scotland
- Scottish Association for Marine Science
- University of the Highlands and Islands
- UHI Argyll
- UHI Inverness
- UHI Moray
- UHI Orkney
- UHI Perth
- University of Strathclyde