Help your higher education marketing be more accessible

Higher education has a wide and varied audience, so helping them feel like they belong feels extra important. Making content accessible to this audience is often baked into the university style guide, along with suggestions about representation in any imagery.

For me, it’s not about trying to be “inclusive” to everyone (and often then not talking directly to anyone), it’s about knowing your target audience and doing the best you can to help all of them engage with your content. In this case, the audience is quite broad, which is why there’s a handful of core pillars that I always come back to when writing for higher education:

Plain English

Whether you’re a home student or an international student, attending university is going to require an excellent grasp of the English language. However, it’s still plain English all the way with any marketing. Leading to my next point…

Widely understood language

Text should always use easily and widely understood English, focussed on commonly understood terms. No regional slang, metaphors, idioms, and colloquialisms. HE marketing will be speaking to a range of potential and actual students from all around the world and of different ages, and even different generations.

Accessibility

Content accessibility for readers with vision, hearing, or mobility needs is really important. The obvious ones here are to include alt text for images and subtitles / descriptive texts to accompany videos and podcasts. Font size and use of colours can have a huge impact. For example, a black background with white writing should be kept to a minimum- it’s really hard to read after a while even for those with good vision.

Avoid stereotypes

When writing generally, it’s helpful to use the gender neutral version for terms that can include men and women, ie that are not by definition sex-based, to avoid stereotypes. For example, it’s better to use the word firefighters rather than firemen.

The curse of knowledge

Don’t assume knowledge - follow the best practice of avoiding jargon, and spelling out abbreviations, acronyms and initials.

Having an awareness of the tone of your writing is also high on the list of importance, with the ideal being friendly, professional and empathetic.

How do I find out more?

Take a look at my Prospectus and Promotional Copy work and my Website Copy and Content page to see these pillars in action. I’ve also written a blog post on How do I make my website accessible? if you want a more in-depth look.