Inclusiveness

A (very) brief set of guidelines for what we as a project should be doing to make sure that we're upholding our commitment to inclusiveness. This page will most likely be reactive: us taking notes on what we did wrong (or failed to think about), so that we remember it again. Feel free to add to it as you think of ways we can demonstrate our inclusiveness.

Disability inclusiveness

Pay attention to Accessibility in every page we design. We need to constantly be aware of:

• not using color as sole signifier of state, value, etc

• making our icons visually distinct at high resolutions/large font sizes/etc

• always having keyboard alternatives to mouse control

• minimizing the "depth" to which someone has to click to get somewhere -- all common workflows should be at most two clicks away from whatever page you're on

• if anything on the site is mouse-controlled, it shouldn't require small mouse gestures

• most-used items should be at the top and the bottom of menu items, with lesser-used items in the middle

Nationality inclusiveness

• Any/all real-time events (volunteer meetings, account sales, etc) should take into account that not all people will be in a US timezone.

• Any/all time-sensitive events (account sales, etc) should be scheduled in two blocks with a large offset, to hit "waking hours" globally. ("Evening EST" is the middle of the night elsewhere, etc.)

Racial inclusiveness

• All site images that are intended to represent 'this is a human' should be colored in such a way to avoid making any assumption about what 'default' skin color is; 'flesh'-toned assumes a default whiteness that is non-inclusive to people of color.

Religious inclusiveness

• Any/all time-sensitive things (realtime volunteer meetings, account sales, etc) need to be scheduled so that they don't begin between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday in any timezone; scheduling anything in that time frame is non-inclusive to Jews who observe the Sabbath by not doing any work (including computer use).

• Ideally doing a survey of the volunteers and making sure it isn't scheduled during an observant holiday or that an alternate time can be used if the set of people is large enough.