Forging Accessible and Legally Sound Policy Language

As a regional teaching institution with an open admissions model, Utah Valley University (UVU) is committed to making education accessible to all in its service region. To support this commitment, the UVU Policy Office strives to make university policy accessible to the university community. We are uniquely positioned to do this: our two-member team consists of two trained and experienced editors, and we are housed within the Office of General Counsel (OGC). Our senior editor, Miranda Christensen (who you may recall from an ACUPA online seminar she conducted) brings experience with Plain English from a previous position at an education company. Our attorneys, with their varied backgrounds and expertise, often participate not only in the legal review of drafts, but also as integral members of drafting committees.

Since the Policy Office became part of OGC two years ago, we have developed a partnership with OGC attorneys to craft policy language that balances legal accuracy with clarity for their intended audience. In this article, we’ll explain how the UVU Policy Office editors and OGC attorneys collaborate by sharing their editorial and legal expertise and by using MS Teams and AI tools.

The Quest for Accessible Language

Step 1

Our drafting committees are chaired by a policy steward tasked with drafting policy and leading the draft through our process. The Policy Office editor assigned to a policy provides ongoing editorial support and guides the policy steward throughout all phases. Once a drafting committee finalizes its draft, it submits it to the Policy Office for a comprehensive editorial review.

Step 2

In addition to typical editing tasks, the Policy Office editor conducts readability tests. The one we rely on the most is the Flesch-Kincaid test. These readability tests help us determine whether the draft is at a reading level that is appropriate for its intended audience. For example, for policies intended for students, we try to keep the reading level at Grade 10 to 14. For policies intended for faculty and graduate students, a higher reading level is appropriate. (We have not yet established a concrete Plain English rubric with formalized recommendations for reading levels and audiences—we hope to return later with another blog post about that.)

Step 3

If the editor determines that a lower reading level would be appropriate, they discuss this with the policy steward and the assigned attorney and begin their work. We have experimented with using AI (CoPilot or ChatGPT) as a tool to help us simplify complex passages. We may use prompts similar to this:

Simplify this paragraph into plainer English:

{Text inserted}


“Recast this text into reading level 12.”

{Text inserted}

Step 5

Once AI provides the revised paragraph, the editor reviews it to determine if it is sufficiently recast and if it fits the tone and context of the policy. Often, the editor makes further revisions. When the editor completes making the revision, they tag it with a comment. In this comment, the editor indicates they used AI to help simplify the text. They also use the comment to ask the assigned attorney to review the proposed revision. The prevailing concern for the editor is to ensure their revision didn’t lose any intended legal meaning.

Collaborating with our Attorneys

The assigned attorney conducts their legal review to ensure the policy content is legally sound and meets compliance requirements with Utah Board of Higher Education policy, state laws, and federal laws and regulations. The attorney is also tasked with ensuring the policy language itself communicates clearly any required legal meaning.

Because we use MS Teams to collaborate during the review process, the editor, the attorney, and the policy steward can chat or comment back and forth within the document. Once the attorney completes their review, the editor, attorney, and policy steward meet to review all revisions and resolve outstanding issues or questions.

This collaboration requires diplomacy and compromise. As the Policy Office editors, we do our best to advocate for clear, accessible language, while the attorneys focus on ensuring legal soundness to protect the institution and its community. There are situations where established legal language must prevail, and others where plain language is sufficient. The editors and attorneys, along with the policy stewards, can prioritize these needs through collaboration. The result of this collaboration is a policy that has benefited from those with editorial skills, subject matter expertise, and legal expertise.

One of our attorneys, Greg Jones, said this about his experience with the collaboration between editors, attorneys, and policy stewards:

“This was an ensemble project; team members respected each other’s proposed edits, even the ones that were ultimately rejected. We learned how to work with each other through the process of back-and-forth. Toward the end, a moment came when I thought everything was coming together, but I could see we had some legal problems with the draft. I saw a way to both fix those problems and significantly simplify the policy, but my solution would trample past edits of team members, and for all I knew it might break something. The team let me take a shot at it. The next day, we started our meeting, and to my surprise, they not only accepted my edits but liked them. This turned out to be a collaborative effort in which everyone enhanced the effectiveness of the others, focused on our objective, and we achieved success. In the end I did not feel like an attorney advising the drafting committee but simply felt like another member of the team.”

What our Attorneys Contribute

Policy Officer editors have discovered the following about what their attorney colleagues contribute to crafting policy language:

• They do indeed wish to use clear, Plain English as much as possible; they are willing to work with the editors and compromise on language. The exception is where specific language has been established in case law and is imbued with specific legal meaning.
• They are aware of the subtle legal meaning that certain words or phrases have—this is training most editors do not have. They work with us to determine whether we can use simpler phrasing if we have to use the legal term or language.
• They have excellent editorial instincts and provide suggestions on the logical order of ideas and consistent use of terms, and which terms are appropriate.
• They can see how language and legal meaning have a very subtle interplay and how even seemingly small revisions can have an impact on the legal meaning and standing of policy text.

Ongoing Benefits of this Collaboration

We have found it powerful and enlightening to see how beneficial this interaction between editors, attorneys, and policy owners can be. In the UVU Policy Office, we find ourselves amazed at how much we learn from our attorneys about the complex legal landscape of higher education. The Policy Office believes that this partnership results in well-crafted, effective policy.

A metaphor for how this relationship works came from a recent team event: UVU OGC held its annual goal-setting retreat at a lovely cabin in the mountains of Utah. Afterwards, we went on a hike by taking a ski lift to the top of the local ski resort. We then hiked down to a beautiful, well-known waterfall.

Although the hike was a descent, it was challenging for me. I had recently spent 6 weeks limping around with a cane due to a rogue knee. Having just started physical therapy and exercise to regain stability and function, I really wanted to go on this hike but had serious hesitations. The team encouraged me to go.

Within a few minutes of stepping off the ski lift, a teammate stayed behind with me to make sure I made the descent safely. His companionship and care motivated me to not turn back, but to keep going. The group ahead stopped often to make sure we could catch up. Team members took turns asking me how I was doing, whether I needed water or a break, and if I needed assistance crossing the stream at the base of the waterfall. Then our manager and another coworker left the group early to retrieve his SUV and drive up the mountain as far as he could to shorten the distance from the waterfall back to the resort. Three coworkers walked me to the point where our manager picked us up, while the rest of the group took the regular trail down.

Our team collaborated to make this hike enjoyable not only for me, but for all of us. Each person seemed to know instinctively what I, or any of us, needed in the moment. At one point, the team cheered on one of our teammates who has a fear of heights but took the lift up the mountain. Each teammate took turns taking care of each other. This is the core of any work we do in higher education—drawing upon the expertise of colleagues across many disciplines and collaborating to build not only solid policy, but institutions striving to fulfill their educational missions.

 

The benefits and challenges of drafting by committee

I think it is no small secret that universities love a committee. Whether you call them committees, working groups, task forces, advisory groups, steering committees, or something else entirely, it would not surprise me to learn that your university has these in abundance. If there’s a problem, there’s probably a committee being formed to find the solution.

But I jest. Committees (advisory groups, task forces, etc.) are an integral component of collegial governance. And in many ways, there are indisputable benefits to having a cross-institutional committee weigh in on policy decisions that have broad campus impacts.

Benefits such as:

• Breadth of expertise: Universities are awash with subject matter experts and their expertise can help ground the policy in the context of the university’s campus culture and history.
• Cross-divisional representation: Including representation across different divisions of the university helps create well-rounded and inclusive policies and ensures relevant application in all areas.
• Proactive stakeholder consultation: Early input from relevant stakeholders can speed up the policy approval process by identifying and addressing issues right away.
• Improved uptake: When more people have been involved in the policy process it creates a sense of shared ownership which can lead to better buy-in and uptake during the operationalization of the policy.

However, the question at the heart of this blog post is: Is drafting by committee the most effective strategy for policy writing? And I’m not so sure that it is. While we want to ensure we are capitalizing on the wealth of expertise available on campus and gathering the relevant people in the room, we also run the risk of the proverbial “too many cooks in the kitchen.” And when we have too many cooks in the kitchen, we can end up with a policy that includes everything and the kitchen sink.

Drafting by committee can lose sight of the overall objective.

The challenge with drafting by committee is that we can quickly lose sight of the overall objective as everyone starts getting into the weeds about what the policy needs to say and how it needs to be said. People come to the table with their own personal objectives of what they believe the policy needs to cover, and if they successfully convince the rest of the committee to include each of those objectives or pieces of information, we can quickly end up with a policy draft that is unwieldy.

Drafting by committee can cause logistical challenges.

Challenges such as coordinating meetings, keeping people on task, waiting for each committee member to weigh in on decisions, coming to consensus with there are differing opinions and perspectives, time spent wordsmithing the language so that we can land on a message that's not only precisely accurate, but accurately precise while also artfully exact, with every word pulling its semantic weight. Or at least that’s what the linguists in the room tell me.

So how and when can we use committees in our policy process?

My personal preference is to capitalize on existing committees as part of an early consultation process. As we covered at the start of this blog, it is highly likely that you already have a plethora of committees at your disposal. There is likely one, if not two or three or four, committees scattered across campus that include relevant subject matter expertise and cross-institutional representation that you could utilize to help inform the policy without actually asking them to write it. Why ask people to form and join yet another committee when you can simply go to them? Instead, consider:

• Take the existing policy (or the plan for a new policy) to the committee and ask the committee members to identify their top one to two pain points with the policy.
• Take that information away, and use it to help inform the new draft.
• Bring the new draft back to the committee for feedback.

The key to this process is to let the committee know they are not “the owners” of the policy, you are there seeking their feedback and expertise, but that ultimately the policy drafter is making the final decision on the scope, content and language of the policy.

This process can be repeated with however many relevant committees or groups exist on campus relative to the topic of the policy being drafted or revised. Utilizing existing committees in this way helps reap the benefits, while sidestepping the challenges.

Whether you always write policy by committee, never write policy by committee or occasionally find yourself writing policy by committee, this blog post has hopefully sparked some reflection on the value and pitfalls of drafting by committee.

Harnessing Your Policy Superpowers

In our role as policy professionals, we routinely deal with complex processes and subject matter outside our immediate span of control. We may likely find ourselves depending on the efforts of key partners to accomplish parts of the work. We may also recognize, all too clearly, that policy development is a collaborative and cross-functional effort involving others over whom we may have no actual authority. If policy making is a team sport comprised of players from distinct silos within the organization, how then do we most effectively engage the team resources for the policy program?

Following are three superpowers that may be utilized to harness the power of a cross-functional team for the policy office, especially when dependent on informal influence rather than direct formal authority to accomplish tasks.

The Power of Relationships

Build trust and relationships with key organizational stakeholders

Relationships provide the secret sauce to get things done. Determine the key partners to your work who are outside your span of control and intentionally seek them out. Build mutually beneficial alliances to support the policy work.

The Power of Clarity

Establish role clarity within the policy process

Although we are partners in the policy process, our roles will vary. Ensure your partners are clear on what you are asking of them and when it is needed, as well as how it supports their interests.

The Power of Culture

Understand the culture of your organization

Knowing the informal conventions about how things work and what is valued in your particular environment provides the crucial context around how to get things done most effectively and avoid missteps. Develop keen organizational awareness.

Through these avenues of influence, we may create a pathway for cross-functional collaboration that allows us to accomplish and maintain outcomes beyond our immediate office resources. We activate expanded assets within the organization for the policy work by leveraging our influence.

The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the association or post-secondary institution. The author does not receive any financial incentive for purchases made through the links included in this post.

 

Seeking Specialized Skills

I often identify myself as a keen continuous learner, and when I start to feel stuck or bored, I tend to look for learning opportunities or new hobbies. When I wrote What’s in your Policy Closet earlier this year, I was at a point in my career where I wanted and needed more professionally. In December 2022, that stuck feeling led to seeking out professional development opportunities and resources that could help expand my skillset and reignite the passion I had for my job, while preparing to request a reclassification. I had previously attempted to seek out policy-specific learning opportunities, but quickly realized those types of experiences were few and far between.

Reigniting Professional Passions

In more recent searches for relevant materials and webinars, I somehow stumbled upon an international bestselling book by Perfect Policies founder Lewis S. Eisen titled Rules: A Guide to Drafting Respectful Policies and Directives. The book arrived during the first week of January, and was a good reminder that policies need to be drafted with clarity and respect, while assuming positive intent from those who fall under them, as well as the importance of avoiding the parent-child dynamic in policy writing. While reading, I thought to myself, “he gets it,” and felt reassured that I was developing policies in a good way.

Inspired by Lewis’ writing, I found myself scouring the internet for other materials, opinion pieces, articles, and learning opportunities that he offered. In an opinion piece published in 2021, he wrote “ Drafting policies and directives is not rocket science, but it does require specific knowledge and skills that must be deliberately acquired,” and that really resonated with me because it wasn’t until I discovered ACUPA that I was able to connect with other policy professionals and could tap into policy-specific learning opportunities.

Having connected with Lewis via LinkedIn, I learned that he had developed a virtual workshop on Advanced Policy Drafting Techniques, and having recently had the pleasure of attending that workshop, I wanted to share a few key takeaways from those sessions, such as values-based policy drafting, a quick way to ensure respectful wording, and the place for plain language. I have also provided other resources that I have found helpful throughout my policy career.

Virtual Learning

One of my favorite things about attending any professional development opportunity is the broad experience that participants bring to the classroom, especially in virtual settings where contributors are often distributed across the globe. Policy-specific professional development opportunities almost always have to be very deliberately sought out, which means that going into any learning opportunities, I know I am going to be surrounded by other keen policy professionals at different stages in their careers and from different employment settings. I’ve had wonderful discussions with people from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, just to name a few, who have held positions in academia, non-profit, government, and other employment settings. Discussions with fellow attendees and course instructors, as well as meetings with ACUPA members, always leave me feeling inspired and ready to get back to work. I would encourage anyone feeling stuck to spend some time expanding their professional community and learning from people with different perspectives and worldviews.

Values-Based Policy Drafting

Regardless of your geographic location and work environment, the establishment where you work likely has a mission statement, values, and goals. When drafting a policy, it is important to have your institution’s values in mind and be able to tie the policy to those values. Although this may seem like common sense and is something I have in the back of my mind, I realized when it was being presented by Lewis that I do not deliberately consider how a policy relates to the values of my place of employment during the proposal or drafting stages. I draft with clarity and respect, try to assume positive intent from all employees, and avoid the parent-child dynamic as best I can, but there is so much more to the policy cycle, a lot of which requires buy-in and collaboration.

Positive Positioning

When people hear policy, they usually think of rules, and immediately want to push back because they don’t want to be told what to do. As the authority drafting or revising the policy, it is important to know how that policy, or changes to it, could impact the values of an institution. Connecting a new policy, or changes to an old policy, to the company or institution’s values helps with optics, and more importantly, helps to gain buy-in from others, especially from senior leadership and potential collaborators. In being able to state, “this policy aligns or supports values X, Y, and Z, by . . .” and “this policy will achieve X, Y, and Z, by . . .” the policy itself, or revisions, become attached to goals rather than rules, and are automatically viewed in a more positive light. Illustrating how someone or something specific fits into a policy or strategic document, and how it can benefit them, is an important part of the consultation process.

Re-Introducing Respect

Lewis’ book and workshops focus on the importance of clarity, conciseness, and respectful wording, which means removing the underlying assumption of a parent-child dynamic from policies. We first learn about rules as children, and those rules are set by adults. What we took away from that experience is that all rules need to sound like that, but policies are written by adults and for adults, so they need to be written in a way that makes others want to adhere to them. This means employing an approachable tone and removing words like must, may (a blunted must unless representing a possibility), many, and should (which represents a recommendation rather than a rule) from your policy vocabulary. Simply removing these terms will change the tone of your policy from condescending to respectful, and sets rules that people are more willing to follow.

Make it a Manual

How often do you find yourself thinking or saying, “no one is reading/following this policy?” Another significant takeaway related to language and terminology from Lewis’ workshop was the idea of who needs to read and understand the policies we write. The short answer is relevant policy professionals, specialists, and those with authority over the policy. As policy professionals, many of us have adapted to using plain language, but have you ever considered that by using plain language in policy, your directive may become murky or lost completely? Policies are, after all, for use by specialists (like us), and those with authority over them. This means that policies can and should often contain jargon and technical terms because they are necessary for clarity. Non-experts, on the other hand, require good guidance documents. Lewis suggests thinking of the guidance documents as a pamphlet; an office or unit-specific manual for employees to reference that tells them everything they need to know, with hyperlinks to other relevant documents. Although these additional guidance documents take time to develop, I would argue that they are a valuable resource that could lead to increased awareness and compliance within offices.

Never Stop Networking

If you’re feeling stuck, losing your passion for policy, or are seeking more from your career, I highly recommend attending events and professional development opportunities. A great place to gain new policy knowledge is through expanding your network by connecting with ACUPA colleagues and becoming more involved with the association by joining a committee, attending the annual conference, and taking advantage of the many continuous learning opportunities available to you. 

Another way to expand your skills and participate in sessions with like-minded policy professionals is by searching regularly for experiences available through Eventbrite. This is a great way to find hidden gems! Earlier this month, I participated in an interactive session on policy change. The workshop was marketed as “a fun and quirky journey through the science of policy change - with pop culture references to really nerd out together,” and it was such a unique, fun way to learn and discuss policy concepts with individuals from across the world. It also provided me with new LinkedIn connections and relevant examples that I can use to discuss policy with my colleagues who don’t necessarily understand what I do and why policy is important.

Along with attending and participating in opportunities available via Eventbrite, I have also recently discovered a site called Apolitical that has some great resources. Though geared towards government and public servants, the policymaking learning opportunities available through Apolitical, such as free and for-fee courses, articles, and events, are valuable regardless of the setting you work in and where you are in your career as a policy professional.

Educational Opportunities Recommended by Sara:

Drafting Policies for Maximum Engagement (available for a fee, next offered in February 2024)

An Introduction to Policymaking (online, free)

Stakeholder Engagement 101 (online, free)

Silo-Busting for Public Servants (online, free)

Certificate in Policy Development and Implementation (online, available for a fee)

Eventbrite (online, free/available for a fee)

Additional Resources Suggested by Sara:

Rules: A Guide to Drafting Respectful Policies and Directives

How to Write Effective Policies and Procedures: The System that Makes the Process of Developing Policies and Procedures Easy

Become A Procedures Pro: The Admin's Guide to Developing Effective Office Systems and Procedures

Articles by Lewis S. Eisen

Ten Benefits of the Perfect Policies™ Approach

5 Obstacles to Policy Approval: How to Craft a Good, Approvable Policy

What Does Policy Actually Mean, Anyway?

Making Your Policies Accessible to All Audiences

Most institutions are now aware of the need for recognizing and respecting the differences among the members of our stakeholder communities. As policy administrators, many of us are building equity review into our policy development processes.

Most of us now publish our institutions' policies online and share our policy drafts electronically, rather than in paper policy manuals or through paper documents. Just as it's important to consider adding equity review to the development of policies, it's also important that we consider how to prepare the content for distribution in ways that make it accessible to a wide range of people, including those who use assistive devices.

Here are some considerations for your institutions, all of which we’ve put in place here at Washington State University (WSU):

• Establish a policy and/or procedures for improving the accessibility of online and electronic content. As an example, here at WSU we have an executive policy and supporting procedures:
  • University Web Accessibility Policy
  • Ensuring Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility
• Require web accessibility training for all institutional online developers and webmasters.
• Provide issue reporting and complaint/grievance procedures regarding accessibility issues.

At WSU, our Web Communications unit handles web accessibility problems and our institution's ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) coordinator is responsible for managing access complaints and grievances.

Creating Accessible Word and PDF Documents

Most of us use Word to create our source documents and either Word or PDF for drafts and creating web versions of our policies. Taking in consideration of assistive devices, here's some key components for making Word and PDF documents accessible to all:

• Headings:
  • Headings create a hierarchy in the document that a screen reader can follow.
• Document Title, Description, and Tags:
  • A default document title is necessary for a screen reader to be able to scan and read out loud to its user.
  • A document description gives screen reader users a brief summary of the document they are about to read.
  • Document tags allow a screen reader to know if they are looking at an image, a paragraph, a heading, etc.
• Hyperlinks:
  • Hyperlinks need to have clearly defined labels of the destination of each link so that a screen reader is able to read them out loud when scanning the document.
  • It's preferable to embed link URLs (attach the URL in the background to a word or phrase using the Link function), also known as contextual links, rather than writing out URLs in the document.
• Tables:
  • Clear table structures and headers are necessary for a screen reader to be able to scan the document.
• Alt Text:
  • Alt Text data allows a screen reader to scan a description of tables, figures, or images that may be on the document.
• Lists:
  • The built in formatting tools of Word make it easier for the screen reader to scan the document.
• Capitalized Words:
  • Use bold for emphasis and avoiding capitalization of words.
  • Assistive devices may provide capitalized words to users by reading each individual letter, instead of complete words.
• Tab/Reading Order
  • For PDFs, identifying the reading order of a document’s text helps a screen reader present the text as it is meant to be read, rather than just as random blocks of text.
    

Creating Fully Functional PDFs from Word

With the latest versions of Word in Office365, all accessibility functionality in a Word source document may be directly transferred to a PDF version:

• Select File->Save As
• Change the file type (suffix) from the default Word Document (.docx) to PDF (.pdf).
  A PDF file created in this way includes all of your active hyperlinks and other functionality.
  

Creating Accessible Documents from Scanned Images

In order to make scanned document images accessible to a screen reader user, a few things need to be done, otherwise none of the information on the document can be read by a screen reader:

• Make or convert the scanned image to PDF
• Under Tools (in Adobe Acrobat Pro):
  • Select Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
  • Select Text Recognition and In This File, and
  • Select the pages to be included
• Under Tools:
  • Select Action Wizard, then
  • Select Make Accessible
  • Select Find Recognize Text Using OCR
• In the Recognize Text -- General Settings window:
  • Select the applicable language and
  • Select Searchable as the PDF Output Style
• Select OK
  

Accessibility Guides

The process of increasing equity in our policies and policy access is ongoing. Here are some accessibility guides to provide you with further ideas as you get started:

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
• U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) 18F Accessibility Guide
• WSU Web Communications Accessibility Guides