Information gathered from: Words Matter: Inclusive Experiences Start with Inclusive Language
Summary: Firms that practice inclusive design break into new markets, retain more customers, get employees engaged, and minimize legal risks and negative press. Inclusive language is a key component of inclusive design, yet many organizations — including many that say they are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) — fail to recognize its importance or don’t know where to begin. This report introduces best practices derived from consumer research and offers recommendations to assess how inclusive your content is.- Forrester
Why it matters:
- These are core values that are important to many customers and employees
- If you want to be inclusive then you need to commit to having an inclusive experience
- You can’t have an inclusive experience without inclusive language
The Business Case:
- Opportunity to differentiate
- Employees want to work for a company that values and practices inclusion
- Legal risk
- Customers value inclusion
5 best practices:
1. Write and speak in plain language- communicate in a simple and clear way.
- ‘Plain language is organized, concise, and conversational and takes into consideration the audience’s expertise and level of interest.’ Forrester
- Avoid colloquial language
We (Forrester) asked 32 consumers from the US and UK to react to privacy policies of two major banks that we anonymized: Bank Alpha and Bank Delta. Bank Alpha’s policy was written in plain language, and Bank Delta’s policy included legal and financial jargon. Test participants had almost no difficulty reading and understanding Bank Alpha’s policy, while they struggled to follow Bank Delta’s policy. At the end, 30 out of 32 participants said that they would be more willing to open an account with Bank Alpha.
Forrester
2. Avoid Exclusionary words
- They may create an implicit bias: normal, blindspot, whitelisted, blacklisted, master
- Try using ‘blocked’ and ‘allowed’ vs, ‘blacklist’ or ‘whitelist’
- There’s already research on this! Use the resources listed at the bottom of this article
3. If you really need certain demographic data, explain why
- Don’t include age, gender, and ethnicity in forms/surveys unless you provide a reason for it
- Customers need to know the purpose of the information you’re asking.
We (Forrester) asked 32 US and UK consumers about their gender, showing options without and with the following explanation: “We are asking this question to respectfully communicate with you and better understand our customers. You can decline to answer it.” Forty-one percent of participants (13 out of 32) indicated that knowing why gender is needed made them more comfortable answering the question.
Forrester
4. Provide inclusive answer options
- Include options like ‘other’, space to self-identify, and/or skip the question
- Writing meaningful alternative text for every image you use
- Include good, accurate captions for multimedia content including your regular Zoom and/or team meetings
- Make sure that your content in descriptive enough- ex. Link names instead of ‘learn more’ maybe ‘learn more about __ product’
We (Forrester) tested dscout’s approach in a remote usability test with 32 participants from the US and UK. Forty-seven percent of participants (15 out of 32) preferred this inclusive approach the most. We evaluated several options for asking about race and ethnicity and got similar results. Participants were more willing to answer the question when we explained why we wanted to know about their race or ethnicity and provided more options to identify (see Figure 5). If you can’t offer inclusive choices because of current regulatory or compliance requirements, as some financial services firms have told us, explain why to your customers.
Forrester
5. Some ways you can bring this topic inclusivity forward:
- Quotes are gold- Bring forward stories (or customer verbatim) about how customers feel when they’re excluded.
- Normalize inclusive practices- model inclusive best practices in things as simple such as your daily staff meetings
- Show the good and bad outcomes that are already out there and being talked about. There’s research that you can reference!
- See where you are with this Inclusive language review process <<< use this resource!
Resources:
- Plain Language guideline: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/
- Word List: https://garden.zendesk.com/content/word-list
- Web Accessibility Initiative: W3C
- Guidance on which words to use: https://spectrum.adobe.com/page/inclusive-ux-writing/
- Inclusive language and why it matters, broad perspective- https://consciousstyleguide.com/
- Common mistakes and words to replace with: https://content-guide.18f.gov/our-style/inclusive-language/
- Standard Chartered Bank Inclusive Language Guide
Information gathered from:
Report: Words Matter: Inclusive Experiences Start with Inclusive Language
Podcast: 280: Inclusive Experiences Start With Inclusive Language