NASIG 2021

As universities develop graduate degree programs or move toward the adoption of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), a need arises to create a document template which satisfies program requirements, supports backend workflows for ingestion into an institutional repository, and offers an accessible, intuitive formatting guide for student authors. At the University of Southern Indiana, the library worked with the Education department to develop a dissertation template for a new Doctor of Education program. Inspired by an ETD template from the Ohio University College of Education, we built the dissertation template to not only standardize formatting for student convenience, but with updated layout and built-in accessibility to create a digital-first document that will be accessible to all readers who access the final ETDs in the repository. The library then developed three thesis templates (APA, MLA, and Chicago style) for existing masters programs. To ensure document accessibility, we adhered to WCAG 2.1 success criteria (when possible within Microsoft Word) as a point of departure and supplied additional keyboard shortcut paths in situations where menu or process navigation seemed overly cumbersome for users navigating the document without the use of a mouse.

This hands-on workshop will walk attendees through how to create their own templates using advanced Microsoft Word formatting features and best practices in accessibility and UX design. Attendees who have never considered accessibility best practices for document creation will learn techniques which will be immediately applicable to their own documents and communications. More experienced participants will gain insights into accessibility concerns specific to dissertations and theses, as well as having time to develop templates for their own institutional needs. Access will also be provided to USI’s four existing ETD templates released under a CCO license.