Published on: 27/03/2026 · Last updated on: 15/06/2026
1. Overview
Colleagues from across the University worked together to create and share new inclusivity guidance for presenters at Undergraduate Open Days. This work was motivated by previous attendee feedback praising practices, such as real‑time captions. The aim was to improve the open day experience by sharing standard and simple inclusive guidance to presenters. While the long term impact is yet to be measured, early reflections highlight improved staff awareness and opportunities to expand inclusive practice across future events.
“This started from feedback received from attendees of the June Open Day. We had quite a few visitors share how useful things like PowerPoint auto-captioning was and it would be great if it was more widely available.”
Steven Lawrence (Student Support & Safeguarding)
2. Background Context
Undergraduate Open Days attract a large and diverse audience: this includes prospective students, parents, carers and attendees with disabilities. Positive feedback from the June 2025 event highlighted the value of inclusive features – particularly real‑time captions – and the desire for greater consistency across sessions. The aim of this work was to build on this success and make the talks more accessible to the audience by developing simple inclusivity guidance and sharing this with all presenters.
Presenters for Open Day receive multiple documents (briefing notes, mandatory slides, and emails) and those who present infrequently may be less familiar with inclusive presentation practices. The new guidance was designed to be short, practical and easy to support colleagues implement without overwhelming them.
This work supports the University’s broader Equality, Diversity & Inclusion priorities and aligns with the Inclusive Education Project. It was led by Steven Lawrence (Student Support & Safeguarding), Luiza Bell and William Trimble (both from Assistive Technology), in collaboration with Lucy Perry (Marketing) and supported by colleagues from the Centre for Learning and Teaching.
3. Approach
The guidance aimed to provide simple, high impact steps – rather than a prescriptive checklist- to help presenters to embed inclusive habits regardless of discipline or experience.
The team used their different perspectives to include key inclusive actions and mapped these to existing accessibility resources. The final draft was shared to all presenters ahead of the October Open Day.
4. Outcomes
The new guidance focused on five core actions:
- Use a Microphone
- Enable Real-Time Captions
- Prepare Accessible Slides
- Describe Visual Content Clearly
- Make On-the-Day Adjustments
📄Read the Inclusive Presenters Guidance – Open Day October 2025.docx
Although developed within a short timeframe, the guidance has helps raise awareness and establish a more deliberate, consistent approach to inclusive presenting. This is an important step improving the inclusivity of Open Days and the wider inclusivity journey that is happening in the institution now.
Formal evaluation is planned, alongside analysis of Open Day survey feedback and reflective input from staff.
5. Looking forward
Due to timing constraints, the guidance went out as a standalone message, but the plan is to integrate it with the main presenter briefing pack to avoid information being overlooked.
For future Open Days, there are plans to:
- circulate the guidance earlier to presenters
- integrate it into the main presenter briefing pack
- explore attendee feedback and staff reflections to refine the approach
6. Recommendations
It’s really useful to have simple and standard guidance for inclusive presenting, which gives a strong starting point for future improvements.
Colleagues are encouraged to use this guidance for Open Days and adapt it for internal presentations, conferences and teaching.
7. More resources
Inclusive presentation guidance:
- Guidance for planning and delivering accessible lectures (Teaching Hub)
- Checklist for an accessible PowerPoint (Teaching Hub)
- PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker
- Live captions in PowerPoint
More resources on inclusive practice: