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Inclusion and Diversity Community Group
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Create inclusive language references #17

Open LJWatson opened 4 years ago

LJWatson commented 4 years ago

Knowing the right language to use in relation to disability, ethnicity, gender identity etc. can be difficult.

TzviyaSiegman commented 4 years ago

this will be assigned to @amyvdh

tobie commented 4 years ago

My understanding is @deniak is also working on this for the spec editing guide.

deniak commented 4 years ago

Indeed, we will update the manual of style: https://github.com/w3c/manual-of-style/issues/7

tobie commented 4 years ago

Screenshot of a portion of the user interface of this page which indicates that "tobie unassigned amyvdh 29 minutes ago"

I have no idea what happened here. I didn't unassign @amyvdh; I don't even have such rights on this repository. So I also cannot assign her back. This seems to be some weird GitHub bug.

tobie commented 4 years ago

I filed a ticket against GitHub's support for that (for reference its number is #780319).

LJWatson commented 4 years ago

Without knowing what's in the screenshot, I don't think you did anything @tobie . When @TzviyaSiegman first mentioned that @amyvdh would be working on this, I could not see Amy's account in the available assignees list - and I have the same problem now. I had the same trouble assigning other people to other issues.

tobie commented 4 years ago

Sincere apologies, Léonie. I really should know and do better. I've added an alt tag to the screenshot which reads:

Screenshot of a portion of the user interface of this page which indicates that "tobie unassigned amyvdh 29 minutes ago"

LJWatson commented 4 years ago

No need to apologise @tobie - we're all human :)

I'm at a loss as to what is going on with this repo though, sorry. Will try to find some help.

tobie commented 4 years ago

Here’s the reply I got from GitHub support:

This is a known issue that our engineers are working on. Basically, what happens is a user is assigned to an issue, then something changes so that the user no longer has permissions to be assigned to the issue. Instead of removing the user at the time of the permission change, it is done when the issue is next saved/updated and the removal is incorrectly attributed to the user who made the most recent update.

hober commented 4 years ago

Indeed, we will update the manual of style: w3c/manual-of-style#7

Awesome!

amyvdh commented 4 years ago

Sorry, was on vacation last week. As background, I sent a list I'd found to @deniak of terms we may wish to change or not use. [[ • Whitelist becomes allowlist. • Blacklist becomes denylist. • Master/slave becomes leader/follower, primary/replica or primary/standby. • Grandfathered becomes legacy status. • Gendered pronouns (for example "guys") become folks, people, you all, y'all. • Gendered pronouns (for example "he" or "his") become they or their. • Man hours becomes person hours or engineer hours. • Sanity check becomes quick check, confidence check or coherence check. • Dummy value becomes placeholder value or sample value.

from: https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-engineers-replace-racially-loaded-tech-terms-like-master-slave/]]

He did a great count of how often we've used these terms but noted how difficult it may be to remove/change them all in place and suggested adding info to pub rules, which he sent a message about this to editors and chairs.

There's been discussion on the lists as you may know and I just want to +1 the discussion including @koalie's suggestion to use they/them everywhere instead of the more unwieldily "he or she".

deniak commented 4 years ago

We have just added a new section in the manual of style to list the terms we want to flag based on the list @amyvdh provided. Note, the list is currently available in a JSON format at https://www.w3.org/pubrules/badterms.json

amyvdh commented 4 years ago

just a note that @svgeesus mentioned in a meeting the other day that some people in the CSS WG had suggested to change some potentially culturally insensitive color names (@TzviyaSiegman and @hober are aware as they were commenting in the thread and @hober mentioned this impacts SVG as well) https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/5284

I support updating our language in these ways to be more inclusive and hope it can be agreed in the groups.

amyvdh commented 4 years ago

Knowing the right language to use in relation to disability, ethnicity, gender identity etc. can be difficult.

  • Could we provide some resources around the correct language to use?
  • Could we curate lists of existing guides?

Resources around some preferred language I found interesting included:

Note: the "Words Matter" piece has some quotes that helped focus or reinforced my thoughts in communicating about possible suggestions. Eg:

[[“In contrast to popular thought, racial bias is not simply an issue of individual biases, but instead a pattern that manifests in policies, practices and everyday operations of the organization.” — Mark Martin, UKBlackTech]]

[[“In tech we need to be very clear in our communication because we are talking about complicated concepts. So it’s important to use metaphors, but we need to be careful about what metaphors we use. We are trying to convey information at the end of the day, and so a bad metaphor is not going to do that for us. Every use of them is a new opportunity to define better terms that suit each situation.” — Mallory Knodel, Center for Democracy & Technology]]

Also see:

ZoeBijl commented 4 years ago

Self Defined by @TatianaMac is an excellent resource on inclusive language. As @wareid mentioned during the meeting it would be good to contribute to this project rather than create something of our own.

Self-Defined seeks to provide more inclusive, holistic, and fluid definitions to reflect the diverse perspectives of the modern world.

With the foundation of vocabulary, we can begin to understand lived experiences of people different than us. Words can provide us with a sense of identity and allow us to find kinship through common experiences.

xmulligan commented 3 years ago

Just wanted to follow this conversation. I'm from the Inclusive Naming Initiative and we have some resources too https://inclusivenaming.org/language/word-list/

tobie commented 3 years ago

+1 to @ZoeBijl and @wareid's point above.

tobie commented 3 years ago

As mentioned during today's meeting, The Linux Foundation offers a free, self-paced course on inclusivity in the tech field created in collaboration with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). While its intended audience is public presenters, it is suggested material for people in leadership positions at the Linux Foundation, so would probably be useful to chairs, editors, etc., at W3C.

I haven't taken the course myself yet. I will do and report back here. I encourage other folks to do so too, so we can have a more diverse set of opinions on the course than just mine.

a11ydoer commented 3 years ago

I was asked to add my comments to the issue from the PWE WG meeting on Feb 2.

tobie commented 3 years ago

I know @deniak has been adding some tooling right check for inclusive languages in specs. There are a number of tools that exist to check grammar for sentence complexity. Some of those might be available to test the language of incoming pull requests, for example.

Unrelated, but also found this resource to remove complex language constructs from English prose: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/the-a-z-of-alternative-words.html

TzviyaSiegman commented 3 years ago

Here is another useful reference https://learn.joinhandshake.com/employers/70-inclusive-language-principles-that-will-make-you-a-more-successful-recruiter/

tobie commented 3 years ago

As mentioned during today's meeting, The Linux Foundation offers a free, self-paced course on inclusivity in the tech field created in collaboration with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). While its intended audience is public presenters, it is suggested material for people in leadership positions at the Linux Foundation, so would probably be useful to chairs, editors, etc., at W3C.

I haven't taken the course myself yet. I will do and report back here. I encourage other folks to do so too, so we can have a more diverse set of opinions on the course than just mine.

I took the course today. I found the content reasonably good overall, although a bit biased towards a North American audience, and slightly ableist at one point (assuming that not looking at someone in the eyes was a micro-aggression).

Overall, the presentation felt very corporate and wasn't very engaging.

I have also found that the language in the quiz was often overly complex, often including double negatives, making it hard to answer the question correctly despite having a good grasp of the material.

I was concerned the content would be essentially focused on gender-bias against women. It wasn't. It was also fairly focused on race, but mostly from a US perspective. The intersectionality mostly stopped there, however. There was very little focus on religion, non-binary genders, culture, or sexual orientation, for example.

I also didn't assess how accessible the platform for taking the course actually was. Clarifying that before recommending the course seems essential.

a11ydoer commented 3 years ago

@tobie Thanks for sharing your feedback on the course. This is very helpful.

tobie commented 3 years ago

My understanding is @swickr also took the course and shared the sentiment I expressed during today's call.

ClydeSeep commented 3 years ago

Thanks @tobie, great feeback and even better timing as we're in the process of making updates to that course right now.

tobie commented 3 years ago

Thanks @ClydeSeep. It's great to hear this course is getting updated. As this thread shows, the industry is in dire need of such content, and it's really generous of the Linux Foundation and the NCWIT to have commissioned this content and to offer it for free. I'm looking forward to the update!

mallory commented 3 years ago

The IETF has been maintaining this repo:

https://github.com/ietf/terminology

Would be great to see how parallel efforts can be aligned and synergised.

wseltzer commented 3 years ago

I found this reference helpful: https://www.nyp.org/documents/pps/cultural-competency/Understanding%20Disparities%20-%20LGBTQ%20Terminology.pdf

shawna-slh commented 3 years ago

Create inclusive language references Would be great to see how parallel efforts can be aligned and synergised.

I generally support:

  1. Pointing to well vetted other references, rather than creating our own
  2. Including in our main style guide the few things that are common in W3C publications
tobie commented 3 years ago

FYI, the Linux Foundation released a second free course on this topic: Inclusive Open Source Community Orientation.

I've found to be some both more engaging and more relevant to today's broader diversity concerns that first course offered.

I would recommend taking it and recommending it to our membership, provided the platform is accessible (I'm not saying it it isn't, just that I don't know how to effectively verify that).

lseeman commented 3 years ago

Hi folks, It may be of interest to see how we are handling disability language in Making content usable for people with cognitive and learning disabilities

We have a short summary at [https://raw.githack.com/w3c/coga/consistency_checks/content-usable/index.html#language-use]language-use

Note that we need to use the word disability sometimes for complex legal reasons. But we tend to avoid disability names and labels and talk about the relevant functional impairments. We are avoiding terms like good or bad.

Some communities prefer identity first language like autistic people, rather than people with autistic spectrum disorder. Gosh, this would be a long conversation....

TzviyaSiegman commented 3 years ago

Thanks @lseeman. If I understand COGA correctly, the recommendation is to "reaching out to individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities to select the best terms within the specific situation and culture." Is that correct?

TzviyaSiegman commented 3 years ago

Per meeting discussion on March 2, we agreed to split this into 3 new issues:

  1. conversational guidance (as in "is it okay if I ask a blind person if she saw a show last night?")
  2. Guidance for technical writing and tools (as in information for writing specs and file naming)
  3. A list of useful resources to guide us
csarven commented 3 years ago

I may be (totally) overthinking this but it came up while I was writing down "see" in a technical report. Technical reports often use language along the lines of "See X for more details", "See also", "See WCAG 3 Introduction for an introduction.."

I realise that context matters but was wondering if there are guidelines for certain expressions to use more inclusive language instead, taking accessibility into account. With "see" for example, as I understand it, it is rooted in having or working sight - physical attribute.

shawna-slh commented 3 years ago

Thank you for being thoughtful about a potential issue.

In this case, it is best to use common language. "See X for more details" is just fine, and what most blind people would write.

Justification: Several years ago I explored language such as "see X for", "click the Submit button", "what are you looking for" (e.g., in usability testing). I expanded on information that I already had from friends, got more first-hand input directly from people who are blind, and read what others had said about the issue. Most strongly preferred the common language. I keep a look out for changes to preferred and recommended language around disability, and haven't seen a call for change around "see". (I did recently see a mouse user asking about alternatives for "click". I haven't see people with disabilities calling for alternatives.)

TzviyaSiegman commented 2 years ago

See also https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/

csarven commented 2 years ago

Is there any guidance for naming actors in spec text?

( https://github.com/solid/specification/issues/244 was inspired by this issue. Interestingly, the first thing we ran into was coming up with actor names in specs. The links that are shared in that issue help to pick names from different sets/databases as opposed to guidance.)

TzviyaSiegman commented 2 years ago

@csarven this is the best PWE question ever, for a trekkie :).

We don't have a definitive guide to choosing names, but we advise using a broad set of names from different cultures. I use a random name generator when I write use cases. I think (personal opinion) that including humor is always a good idea, especially if you make sure that it is cross-cultural.

csarven commented 1 year ago

GitHub has a content style guide for using inclusive language with reference to other guides. Incorporated this into Solid CG Contributing Guide with some additional resources specific towards celebrating people/names from under represented ethnic/cultural backgrounds in examples.