Research gender neutral language for H4CC pages

fecgov / fec-cms

The content management system (CMS) for the new Federal Election Commission website.

https://www.fec.gov

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Research gender neutral language for H4CC pages #4784

Closed kathycarothers closed 3 years ago

kathycarothers commented 3 years ago

Summary

What we're after: To better serve our community we need to update our gender language to be more gender-neutral on the H4CC pages. The trend is to move towards gender-neutral messaging.

Related issues

Completion criteria

We will need to complete the following steps

[x] Research gender-neutral language on other government websites. The more favored word is "you" rather than "they" were appropriate. Come to a decision on the word.
[x] Identify H4CC where this would apply and segment out the pages in chunks
[x] Schedule a meeting with the content team to work through some ideas with Amy
[x] Schedule a meeting with Info and Press

Future work

prstoetzer commented 3 years ago

GPO does not yet address gender neutral language in their style guide.

18F supports the singular they: https://content-guide.18f.gov/our-style/inclusive-language/#gender-and-sexuality

NARA's style guide also includes the singular they: https://www.archives.gov/files/open/plain-writing/style-guide.pdf#page=20

JonellaCulmer commented 3 years ago

@kathycarothers @prstoetzer If we're going to go through this exercise the language changes shouldn't be limited to one section of the site.

kathycarothers commented 3 years ago

More sources from an earlier conversation we had 3 months ago:

A resource on designing/writing for inclusivity of gender that recommends using “they.” https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/design-for-every-gender/

Digital.gov's style guide: https://digital.gov/style-guide/#conscious-inclusivity

Bluebook uses the word "individual" (Jonella email Bluebook not sure if they have responded 3 months ago)

Plain Language community: https://digital.gov/communities/plain-language/

Check with the DEI group

kathycarothers commented 3 years ago

@JonellaCulmer I have created an excel sheet for our research. I will email the sheet. Also, when we meet we need to break this ticket out a little differently.

kathycarothers commented 3 years ago

I sent Amy an email detailing research on this topic on 9/8

kathycarothers commented 3 years ago

Amy is reaching out to Judy and Kate and then we will set up a meeting with Press and Content