Written by Ellen Wildman, Digital Accessibility Skills Developer (ISS)

If you support students who need to submit a thesis, let them know there is now a digitally accessible template available that is also aligned with the formatting requirements that the University set. 

Accessible theses are created in a specific way so everyone can use them – regardless of background, circumstance, or disability. An analysis of academic papers sourced from different research areas found that about 98% had accessibility issues (Menzies et al., 2022). Making research available to everyone puts into practice Lancaster University’s lived value of respecting a diverse and inclusive community of communities.  

Student benefits 

As shown in the first page of the template below, by using this template, students will:  

1. Align their thesis with the necessary layout stipulated by the Manual of Academic Regulations and Procedures. 
2. Ensure their research is digitally accessible (when used appropriately). 
3. Enable ease of navigation by using features of Microsoft Word, for example automatically create a dynamic table of contents with heading-use.

Direct relevant students to visit the Accessible thesis page on ASK to download the template and top-tips to make their thesis accessible. There is also a video to assist those students who might need support to use a Microsoft template. 

Reference  

Menzies, R., Tigwell, G.W. and Crabb, M. (2022). Author Reflections on Creating Accessible Academic Papers. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing. doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3546195.