Use Word templates for plain language and accessibility

Want to get more people in your organization to use plain language and inclusive language and follow accessibility practices? Word templates may be your friend.

I used to think Word templates were only good for making a document look nice. But templates may be a powerful tool to reach a whole organization with guidelines and tips on how to write more clearly, use inclusive language, and make a more accessible document.

Well-known advantages of templates

Most of us recognize that using templates is useful for organizations and solopreneurs.

Templates can

• promote the brand image by treating material in a consistent manner
• set a standard for the organization’s materials (which then makes the brand look even more professional)
• save staff time and effort because staff don’t have to start from zero in preparing each document’s content, structure, and design

TIP: Treating materials consistently also helps keep your writing clear.

Templates as a teaching tool

But could we also use templates as a training tool?

After all, templates get a lot of views—especially if everyone in the organization is required to use them—and reach way more people than one person possibly could with editing and training.

And when handed a new template, many users are actually looking for instructions on how to use it. So why not use that precious attention to teach them how to write more clearly, use inclusive language, and make the document more accessible?

Ideas to try

A few months ago, one UN agency I work with went through a rebranding exercise. I wasn’t asked but I made suggestions on how to improve the organization’s templates. To my excitement, my ideas were incorporated 🎉

So here are some ideas to promote plain language, inclusive language, and accessibility in the organization through a Word template.¹

TIP: If you’ve created custom heading styles, make sure they are set to the correct outline levels.² Otherwise, they might not be recognized as headings.

Will it make a difference?

Stop recycling bad examples

We all know organizations recycle old documents as templates for new ones. After all, if a document was accepted in the past, then it must (presumably) be a good guide for the future.

The problem, however, is that the example documents are often poorly written. In the UN, language tends to be bloated and murky, a “piling of jargon upon jargon,” in the words of former UN editor W. H. Hindle. He points out that UN writers are

apt to believe that the sonorous polysyllables of previous United Nations reports must be used, particularly when these polysyllables have acquired an aura of sanctity….

—W. H. Hindle, A Guide to Writing for the United Nations, 1984.

Offering a good (and officially endorsed) template with clearer sample text may give people—many for whom English is a second or third language—the freedom to avoid the hard-to-understand bloated language and set the tone for something better.

We still need evidence

I don’t have evidence whether updating your organization’s Word template will lead to a noticeable change in the clarity, inclusivity, and accessibility of your documents.

Still, not trying seems like a wasted opportunity. Worst case, it will make no difference.³

I will say that when I updated one template for the unit I work in, adding simple instructions and example text, the drafts were noticeably better. (And made my job editing a lot easier.)

We’ll have to see if the recently updated templates for my UN agency will lead to any noticeable changes!⁴

Let me know in the comments other ideas or ways you’ve used templates to boost plain language, inclusive language, and accessibility!

Resources

• My favorite resources on digital accessibility
• RESOURCES: Plain language for international development

Cover image by Megan Rexazin from Pixabay