 Next, I'm very excited to introduce our panelists today. We have Camille Holmes, who is the Director of Leadership and Racial Equity Initiative of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, and she came to NLADA from the Center for Law and Social Policy. She is a founding member of the Jamestown Project, serves on the Board of Directors of the Poverty and Research Action Council, and is a registered yoga teacher. Next on the panel is Tally Wells, who serves as Director of the Disability Integration Project at Atlanta Legal Aid Society. He is also the creator of OlmstedRights.org, which launched last year through a grant from the Legal Services Corporation, and he advocates for individuals with disabilities who are confined in Georgia institutions and nursing homes and individuals at risk of institutionalization. Zander Carson is a Project Manager at Legal Server, and my former colleague at Pro BonoNet, where he was the Law Help Program Coordinator. Before that, he worked for two years as an Equal Justice AmeriCorps Legal Fellow at Legal Assistance of Western New York and Geneva, New York, where he focused on providing holistic representation to those impacted by a criminal record. Finally, I'm Miranda Magelli, the moderator and the Law Help Interactive Program Coordinator at Pro BonoNet. I previously worked at Legal Information for Families Today, New York, managing a volunteer attorney program, and then a bilingual legal information hotline. And again, welcome to all our guests. So on the next slide, you'll see our roadmap for today. We'll start things off by providing some definitions on cultural competency and related concepts, and then draw out why cultural competence is relevant to legal technology. Camille and I will talk a bit about how we can think about racial and ethnic diversity in relation to legal technology. After that, we'll hear from Tally, who will walk us through website accessibility and inclusion and his experience with the OlmsteadWrights.org website development process. Xander will next cover gender identity and legal technology and forms. And we'll wrap things up with discussion and again encourage you to ask questions and enter questions into the comments box throughout the presentation. We'll pause briefly between the panelists' presentation. So this slide shows our goals for today. And our goals include providing some ideas on ensuring that the tech tools that we use and increasingly rely on to provide legal services and access to justice are reflective and inclusive of the diverse populations legal practitioners serve. We will help you identify some best practices when thinking about design and enhancement of technical tools and services that utilize technology with sensitivity to issues like gender identity and expression, as well as racial and ethnic diversity and disability. And Camille will also revisit these goals in the coming slides. So I'll turn things over to her. Camille. Great. Hello. How is that? I hope everyone is well. And I am going to talk about culture, inclusion, equity, and legal technology. But I wanted to focus on the purpose of this discussion. As we're trying to connect technology, make sure we're using technology in a culturally confident and inclusive way, the point is really to create that inclusive platform that accurately reflects a full range of identities and to capture accurate data. Often when you're trying to build relationships with communities that are not reflected in your office or communities that you're not familiar with, one way to do that is to really show as an organization that you see that community and the members of that community as a part of the total community. They're not an add-on, they're actually a part of the whole. So that's that first why. Why are we doing this? So that people will be able to see themselves reflected and feel connected through the platforms that you're building. Second is to capture accurate data, because often if folks don't feel included or if they don't feel connected, they're not really going to respond in meaningful ways. And the way that you put together your platforms, if they are not really including all of the categories, the ways that people self-define, or as many of those as possible, you may be missing some useful data. And finally, once you've collected that data, you can analyze that data to determine trends and determine if certain groups are experiencing one type of service versus another, determine if people in one neighborhood or one area or of one particular gender expression or one race or ethnic identity are being discriminated against or experiencing disparate treatment or disparate outcomes. And then follow up with that. So having this platform be inclusive is both a good thing to do, but it's also a way to be strategic in your advocacy and to be a robust advocate. I'm going to go over some definitions. I have found in my experience in the legal aid community and through some research that I did through a survey a few years back that people are often conflate terms and don't necessarily make sure that they are understanding those terms in the same way. So I think definitions are really important so that communication can happen and we're not communicating... While we're thinking we're saying one thing, someone else is hearing another thing because they don't really have to share the same definition. And yes, diversity is the first definition. Diversity is a word that we've used a lot. I found even in some instances when people say diversity, they mean race because depending on where you are in the country, it's more or less comfortable for people to talk about race. But diversity is really about variety. It's the statistical presence of a variety of people or things. There are a broad range of types of diversities. You can have racial diversity, ethnic diversity, gender expression diversity, educational background diversity. And the idea is really that you want to be specific about the type of diversity that you are focusing on so that you're not conflating all these various types of identity or types of background. I was with a group in Baltimore and they really crystallized for me that diversity should always have a qualifier. So whether it's geographic diversity, racial diversity, diversity of sexual orientation, and or a compilation of those things because these are also intersectional. We have people of color who are transgender and differently abled. We have people who have high educational background and a lower class background and may speak a different language of origin. We need to think really, be broad in our thinking about diversity and think holistically. My final piece on this side is that my pet pee for the year is that only groups can be diverse. People are not. We all use the word diverse candidate. I've heard it and I've probably used it at one point. It's a shortcut, but people can bring diversity to a group, but really groups are diverse. People are black, white, Asian, differently abled, transgender, heterosexual, homosexual. They are gay, lesbian, bi, but they're not diverse. They bring a certain type of diversity and groups can be diverse. Inclusion. Diversity, I'm going to just mention for a second, is a great thing to aim for. In settings when people are coming together just for a moment, diversity can bring some great benefits. For example, juries that are racially diverse tend to engage in more rigorous analysis and tend to come out with better decisions. But in organizations where people are going to have a long-term relationship or in settings where you're really trying to set the stage, diversity without inclusion is a recipe for problems. Inclusion is when something is within the structure. It's more than just numerical representation. It's authentic and empowered participation and a true sense of belonging. It's a difference between the technology having an add-on to make sure that we're capturing those other people and the technology being developed with those other people so that they are, in fact, at the center, along with everyone else and defining who is at the table and how people conceive of themselves. I talk about structural oppression. Often I'm talking about structural racism, but structural racism is a type of structural oppression. I'm mentioning it here because I'm talking about it here because the reason that we go through the effort of making sure our groups are diverse, making sure that we are inclusive, is often because the world that we live in has actively oppressed and marginalized groups that are different from those groups that have privilege. So structural oppression is the normalization of bunches of dynamics, be it the history of slavery, genocide, it's the culture of leaders looking a certain way or education being provided at different levels in different parts of the country. These structures routinely advantage privileged groups while routinely disadvantaging oppressed groups. And it's something that is perpetuated at multiple levels, at the institutional level, I mean, institutions, the way that we interact individually, our attitudes within ourselves and interact with the culture, the larger culture, our history, and come together to really make sure that those who have continued to have access and those who don't don't. It's important because in order to change this, we have to disrupt the structures of oppression, and that's disrupting structural racism, structural sexism, structural gender bias. And so what you're doing with technology is disrupting that process and actually bringing everyone to the center so that the center is a human however they show up. Equity. The definition stated here, the quality, the state quality or ideal of being just in partial affair. It's... To think about this, this is, again, getting to the idea of disruption. So equity, if we have an equitable system, then the outcomes will look different than they do now if the system is currently not equitable. And so it really involves the creation of proactive policies, practices, attitudes that change the way that inequality and inequities are reproduced. So that when, let's say, someone comes to the website, they can actually see themselves and not suffer the indignity of having to figure out where they are. It's not something that they have to ask about. It's something that the system's already prepared for and planned for and changed so that that sense of inclusion, that sense of an ability to get the same outcomes as someone else who's similarly situated except for the part of the identity identification that is quote-unquote different from the norm. I mean, it redefines the norm. This is what we should begin thinking about with regard to equity and creating equity. It's a challenge, but I think something that is really exciting to think about and something that we can produce. And so cultural competence and cultural humility. We've talked a lot about cultural competence, and if any of you have questions, feel free to send them through to the chat box because it's a lot of definitions in talking, but this is about getting us all on the same page so that we can move forward and have real communication. Cultural competence is this idea that we can interact effectively with people from different cultures and different socioeconomic backgrounds. And I have come across this term called cultural humility, which I like a lot more. One, because competence seems like you can actually achieve it. And I know that I will never be competent in someone's culture that is other than my own. I can learn what their ideals are. I can learn what their expressions of celebration and grief and otherwise are, but I really have to rely on them as the expert in their culture. Cultural humility actually gets me to focus on the fact that I have a culture too. I embrace American culture. I am a black woman and there are cultural aspects to my identity that derive from that. I'm cisgender and that's another part of my culture. And me being able to know that I am coming from a culture that causes me to see others as different from me, being present to that helps me to be open to learning about that other person's culture and learning about accepting their expertise in their own culture. And so it's really about looking at ourselves and being open to learning about how our culture shows up and how we're communicating that and then interrupting power imbalances, developing partnerships with people and groups that advocate for themselves and honoring their understanding and knowledge of their culture and partnering with them to move things forward in a positive way together rather than doing for. And so we played a tiny little trick at the beginning. The takeaways as listed originally really are putting the quote-unquote norm or the unstated norm, which may be white, middle class, educated to some degree, this gender. I can go on and make this up, but instead of saying, how do we ensure that we reflect the diverse populations they are meant to serve? How do we move forward with sensitivity to issues like gender identity and expression or with sensitivity to issues such as racial and ethnic diversity? How do we actually reflect the diversity of the populations? So the population is diverse in and of itself and we are a part of that diversity. The diversity is not coming into us. We are all adding to that diversity. And then similarly, how do we accurately capture and reflect gender identity and expression so that my gender identity and expression is not the norm? It's part of the whole. And finally, how do we accurately capture and reflect race and ethnicity and ability rather than being sensitive to those concerns? We all have race, ethnicity, and ability. How do we make space at the table for everyone to define what that looks like? So I will stop there and ask it on to, I believe... To Tally. Tally. Hi, Tally. Hi. Well, welcome, everybody. If we'll go on to the next two slides unless you want to talk about these two real quickly. Can you? I'm good. No. So I'll go ahead and start on website accessibility inclusion. Hello, everyone. It is exciting to be talking to you today. Real quickly, what I'm going to discuss is more brass tacks about websites and accessibility, particularly for people with disabilities. I'm going to talk about why make websites accessible, how to get started, what are the basics, what are some lessons learned that we have from our work on homesteadrights.org, and specifically my work as an attorney who doesn't have a lot of technical experience but had a dream, wanted to build a website and wanted it to be accessible, and then some of the top tips that I have. Why accessibility and inclusion? First of all, it is the law that we are as required under the American Disabilities Act to provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. And there's also something called Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Now, that particular provision does not apply to most of us because it requires that all people who are receiving federal contracts essentially make their websites accessible, but it does not apply to most grantees, such as TIG grantees such as us. But just because we don't have to do it under the law doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. We're just under the more general requirement to ensure that we provide reasonable accommodations. Another reason is to expand reach. 20% of website users have an impairment, including 10% of men are colorblind. That's a huge percentage of the people that you're trying to reach out to. And it's probably even more for those of us who work with low-income communities because the great percentage, the majority of people with disabilities are in the low-income communities. So it's a higher percentage in our reach. It also promotes inclusion. Everything Camille talked about is a reason why you want to make your websites accessible, inclusive, but not only that, you want to make them inviting. One of the exciting things about the whole world that Apple and the iPhone and all of the others who have done similar things with technology have shown us that things that are really neat to look at and that make an easy to use are often much more accessible and inclusive. So there's a lot we can do that also just makes the world a better place and makes it much more inviting. Kelly, there's a great question here from Jillian, which is, is there a place where we can find out details about breakdown of impairments seen amongst the population beyond colorblind lists? Where do we statistically find those things out? What are the top ones we should be designing for? Right. So I will need to do a little research to get you the exact information, but certainly the main, I think the main areas that we want to hit on in blind, you may actually have some insights on this as well, is we want to ensure that people who are colorblind are able to work through our website, people who are site-impaired and using a screen reader are able to use our websites. And essentially, it's going to be the same as the general population, but for website inclusion, it's often going to be site and hearing that are going to be sort of the main things you want to be aware of. But also, one of my clients had used, he was quadriplegic and used a mouse stick to basically do all of his web travel, but he became quadriplegic in the early 70s, was not able to move below the head, and the internet opened up a whole new world to him that was completely unavailable to him because he had such difficulty traveling around and moving around, and once he was able to communicate with people on the computer, use his mouse stick, he was able to... One of the things he loved to do was to help other veterans apply for veteran benefits, and he was able to do all sorts of communicating and working with people through technology. So one of the really exciting things is that for people who are often left out or isolated, the internet and technology really opens up a whole new world. But I'll have to get you the statistics, Jillian, and everyone. I can do that and get it out to everyone. Yeah, a lot of the W3C standards are really designed to hit as many of those as possible. So Bobby 508 is a good starting point, but W3C standards are also really, really good on the accessibility side. Right, and that's what we're going to talk about mostly is the WCAG. So where to start, Brian just spoke, and he helped develop a guide that I still think is a great guide because it essentially just breaks down the essential requirements and specifically separates it into four categories that we want our websites to be perceivable. We want them so that everyone can perceive what they're seeing on a website, that we want to be operable. We want everything on the website to be functional for every person who uses the website. We want it to be understandable and we want it to be robust. And the guidelines pretty much follow this categorical order. So section 508 versus WCAG 2.0, there's two different sets of requirements. The main requirement that we follow with Olmstead Rights and that Brian was also talking about are the 2.0 guidelines, which were created by the Worldwide Consortium, the Website Accessibility Initiative. And it's primarily for people with disabilities who use assistive technologies. But section 508 also has its very specific requirements that are for purchases by federal agencies. So here are the main recommendations from WCAG, text alternatives for non-text content. This is super easy. You basically, we use ProbonoNet platform. You basically go to the picture and open it up and type in content for the text alternative. Or you go into text alternative and say what the picture is, so that a screen reader can tell a person what is on the picture. Now, one of the things we had some confusion about and we had some issues is when do you describe what a picture is and when do you tell the screen reader just to skip the picture. And you can tell a screen reader to skip a picture by simply putting in quote, quote, and that'll tell the screen reader that it doesn't need to read that picture or tell anyone about that picture. So this picture that's on this page right here is basically decorative. It doesn't really serve a function to tell the story or give conveying enough information that a person needs to know it. So if it's mostly decorative, you don't need, you can just do the quote, quote, and have the screen reader skip it. If it's conveying important information that the person needs to have in order to understand what's on the webpage, then you need to put in the alt text as to what it is. Captioning, this is so easy, especially if you use YouTube. Anytime you have a video, you need to caption it. And I find that the absolutely easiest way to do it is to use the YouTube captioning function. There are plenty of videos out there to describe how to do it, but it's pretty self-explanatory when you go on to YouTube, put a video. The main thing is don't let YouTube just caption your video for you because it will have all sorts of gobbledygook words in there that its technology has tried to interpret what the words are saying. It doesn't do a super bad job, but it doesn't do nearly a good enough job. What I did was I had a high school intern who really wanted a good college reference, and she certainly deserved it because she did a great job on all sorts of things for our website, but one of the things that she did was caption all of our videos, and she had a great time doing it, and she got a great reference, and she started at Dartmouth about a week and a half ago. Create content that can be read by different devices is obviously what we've talked about already, but it's really essential for all devices to be able to read your content. Make content visually and audibly distinguishable. The visually distinguishable is really critical with the different colors. There's a wonderful tool that I think I'll list later in this presentation, the Wave Tool, where you can go and basically put your color scheme on their page, basically have it go look at your website, or if you haven't created it, one of the things we did was we made it a Google Doc and then put that Google Doc webpage through the Wave Tool and have it look at the color contrast because it's essential that you have the color contrast in a way that a person who's colorblind can read all of the content and see all of the content. Make it all functionality available from the keyboard. It is essential that a person who is going to use a keyboard to move around your website as opposed to a mouse is able to do that, and one of the things we learned was that it's important to have your H1, H2, H3 to use that in order. I sort of liked the design and the look of H3 better than H2, and so I was trying to use that, and that was not what I was supposed to do. Also, that also affects how Google crawls your website, and so also if you're using Google AdWords, it's important to use your H1s and H2s in the proper way. You want to make sure the content doesn't cause seizures. One of the things is basically flashing pictures. You want to make sure that your content is not moving so quickly that it's going to cause a seizure. Make sure all users can navigate from where they are, so it's much easier to get around if you're using a mouse tool, but if you're using a keyboard, you want to be able to make sure that everything on your web page, you can get to the next page and everywhere else you want to go. You want to make the web pages predictable. You want to help users avoid and correct mistakes and maximize compatibility. My top five tips. The things that I think you really want to make sure you do no matter what is your alt, imaging, your text, the captioning, which I want to stress again, is so easy. Your color contrast, which you can use the Wave tool for. On that, and I'm going to say this later, planning early really makes a difference. We had a graphic designer help us with some of our icons, and then we figured out that some of the color contrasts on them didn't work where we had some words. They weren't exactly icons, but they were words that showed the different web pages, and it looked beautiful, but it didn't have the correct color contrast, and it was not easy to go back and change that. It's much easier to make those decisions before you get a graphic designer to do these things. The shifting image is what causes the seizures. We had a really neat thing where we would have the pictures change one after another, which I loved because we have great pictures on our website, but it turned out that that didn't fit within the accessibility guidelines. What we did, and what you can often do, is come up with an alternative. We have a way to just click to the right, and you can change the picture yourself. Then the formatting, making sure that a person using the arrows on the keyboard can move around your website. It shouldn't just be the technology accessibility. It's also essential to use inclusive language. People-first language is the term that the disability community and the larger community use for describing people with disabilities. It is quicker to say disabled, and it is offensive to say that because it takes the person out of the language. When I first heard this, I have to admit when I was a new employee at Walt Disney World, and they told me about this in the early 90s, I didn't get it, but the more I've worked with the disability, people in the disability community, the more I have really come to understand the reasons for the language, it is essential. Get yourself a people-first language guide. Make sure you're using people-first language. Sometimes it can be a little wonky, especially if you're working on an article, but it is so essential to people with disabilities, their friends, and the larger community. Also, use pictures that include people with disabilities just like you use pictures for all other diversity. We had a picture party. I ordered pizza, and we had about 30 of my friends with disabilities and without disabilities come together, and we had a photographer come. She volunteered. We took pictures all around Decatur, Georgia, and these pictures populate our website and have really given the website a lot of pizzazz in addition to making it inclusive. I encourage you with the communities you're using, but also that you're working with, but also the larger community, to really use as much diversity in your photographs and to do the things that Camille has already discussed. So, my quick lessons. Number one is plan ahead. The more you can decide to be accessible early on, the easier it is. My analogy is that it costs a ton of money to put an elevator in a house after you've built the house to make the house more accessible, but if you build the house with the elevator inside at the moment you build it, it's a lot cheaper. It is so much easier to make your website accessible if you've thought through all of these things ahead of time rather than after the fact. A lot of these tips are pretty easy to follow when you get into the real details of ensuring that your website is accessible. That's where code matters. That's where the platform you're using matters. We hired and budgeted in our budget an accessibility expert who would review our website. She's done two audits, and we also prepared, especially could prevent on that, that this was an important thing. So the platform that we were going to need to come back and ensure that things were accessible. That was really essential because Pro BonoNet has access to parts of our website that we don't have access to. Having that communication ahead of time really makes sense, and then also include time for corrections. Find people who know this stuff to talk it out, evaluate and reevaluate, and I suggest getting an audit. Those are our main tips. If you want more information, these are just some websites you can go to, which includes the Wave tool that I talked about, as well as the WebCon10 accessibility guidelines, which is pretty easy to read the second time you read it. The first time you read it, you don't really understand what you're reading. The second time you read it, you sort of get it. So read it more than once. And also go to Brian's Alice and tap guide to accessibility. And I think everyone, I think we'll do questions at the end, so I'll turn it over to Xander. Yeah, hi everyone. I'm just going to pause for just a second and make sure that there aren't any questions or anything that Jillian or Brian wants to read out from the chat box on Tally's piece. I'm going to assume that that's a no. And can folks hear me? Okay, thank you. Hey Xander, it's Jillian. I just wanted to call out one comment really quick that I pushed through for the community. I know that there's been a larger focus in the past few years on mobile optimizing sites. I just, what I've seen anecdotally is that many of the changes that can be done to make your site more accessible can actually be done in conjunction to make your site mobile optimized. So for example, you can change, you can go in the most apt example I can think of is with your images that you're uploading onto your site. You can go in and oftentimes with content management systems, you're editing the image, all aspects of the image. You can go in and put in, make sure that the alt language is in there and then you can also go ahead and change the width in the HTML code. You can update it so that the width is mobile responsive. So instead of putting in a set width, you can change the width to 100% so that it adjusts to the screen size. So just wanted to flag that if you're thinking about web accessibility, you can also think about mobile optimization at the same time. Absolutely, and thank you so much. I think that, you know, Tali's metaphor of building a house with an elevator rather than putting an elevator in is a really apt one. And another thing to just think about is if you're doing reconstruction on a house, putting an elevator in while you're already doing work can really save you time and money as well. So just sort of things to kind of think about a little bit. And thank you so much. My name is Andrew Karsten. I'm a project manager at Legal Server. And I'm going to talk a little bit about gender and online content creation before we get into that. I just wanted to call out Camille and her really great at the top of the presentation while she was talking. She used a phrase that I am assuming that many of you may not be familiar with, cisgender or cissexual. I also just used the abbreviation cis. And it described, and I pulled it up quite honestly on Wikipedia, but the definition that I actually think is a pretty apt one is that it relates to types of gender identities and gender identity perceptions where an individual's experience of their own gender agrees with the sex they were assigned at birth. And it is CIS. There was a question that came through about the spelling. And the reason that I thought that it was a really good sort of place to start is that we don't oftentimes think about gender as applying to people who are not either self-identified as women or who are not trans. And what I like about this particular definition of cisgender is that it really talks about a set of gender identities that there's more than one, even within the cis community, that gender is this really multifaceted and multi-layered construct that we have that we think of as a very basic part of our lives, of the information that we share about ourselves, whether verbally or non-verbally, and information that, and this is what we'll sort of focus on, we are all entitled to know. And that's sort of one of the underlying kind of precepts that we have is that gender is something that we are all entitled to know about one another. And when that becomes unclear or when those lines become crossed, we get either very defensive, uncomfortable, a whole range of emotions and responses. And sort of as we're thinking about our work and our approaches to our work, I think it's really important to think about those underlying assumptions that we make, not only about somebody's gender, but also about our right to know that about them. And also just to put out there that, again, you know, this is entitled Gender and Cultural Competency and Legal Technology. And that oftentimes conjures visuals of people who are not cisgender, in particular, that we use that word gender in a lot of ways to describe things that are not the defaults, and the default is so often cis folks, which, you know, it's default. But when we're thinking about this in our own work, that is an assumption that we really need to examine so that we really have a truly inclusive approach to the work that we do. So today we're going to kind of go over a set of a variety of things. The first thing that we're going to talk about is asking about gender. And really, again, what are we asking and why are we asking it? How online platforms ask for gender into the sort of taking that abstract into more of a physical, into more of sort of a tools, how other platforms ask for gender and different examples. And then looking at gender language, and this particularly came out of the need to use gender-neutral language in forms, but it can really impact how we write for our audiences. And then sort of other consideration when creating online tools. So what are you asking when you're asking about someone's gender? And again, this is, you know, there are a couple of things, and I think that the context of online learning and online spaces really forces us to think about what is the information that we need and what is the information that we're asking for. Oftentimes we rely when we're in person on the ability to clarify on nonverbal cues to really allow the person that we're talking about to understand we may be asking, you know, a stock question and allows us to really figure out, like, to really get from that person the information we're actually looking for, even though we're using stock questions. On online spaces we don't have that, we really don't have the ability to do that. We really need to think about this, how we're asking for, I mean, all points of information, but really to clarify and to crystallize what the exact information that we need is and being able to ask that in a respectful way. So some options, when people ask about other people's genders, what they're oftentimes asking, and obviously, again, it depends on the context, but they could be asking what pronoun a user prefers, what gender we can check for our funders, when we're trying to figure out what grant people may fit under, what grant, if they fit those grant criterias, what is the gender that the user identifies with or as, what gender marker is used on someone's legal documents. The other thing that people are asking, and it's really important to understand that what people really are asking when somebody asks, are you male, female, check one, is you're asking about somebody's primary sexual characteristics, and we've used the shorthand to ask for all the other things, all those other four things in one, but that one can be a real problem for a lot of people and a really intrusive question. So if you have a situation where, whether it's in an online scenario or in real life, and you need to know somebody's pronoun, or you need to know what gender somebody identifies as so that you can report that to your funders, those are really specific questions that can be teased out and can be explained without getting swept up into this idea of what sex or what gender are you with a limited number of responses. It is true that those responses and the boxes that you can check are ever-expanding. We'll talk about a couple of examples in the future, but really when you're approaching this, you're really thinking about what are you asking and crystallizing that, and I'm a really visual person. I tend to crystallize that on a document, just trying to figure out going through each of those intake forms or demographic forms and really circling them and say this piece of data maps to this reason for asking it, and if there's not a reason, if your funders don't require it, if you don't need to know a pronoun for a user, if you don't need to know what gender marker is on a user's legal documents, then you don't need to ask it. It's not something that you need to know. Oftentimes it comes sort of pre-populated in these base setup forms, but they're not always mapped to reasons for asking that, so just being aware of that. I am a visual person. I really like flow charts. So again, do you need to know a user's gender? If the answer is no, you don't have to ask. Again, if the answer is yes, then really thinking through why you need that and that answer to why you need it dictates the real question that you're going to ask that person or the user group that you're talking to. So these are some suggestions. They are my suggestions. If you'll notice the asterisks with the really big red arrow and then at the bottom, these are only my suggestions. They're not legal service suggestions. They're not pro bono, not sick suggestions. They're not LLSNTAP suggestions. They're not join me as suggestions. And most importantly, they are not the suggestions of the entire trans community. When putting this together, one of the reasons that I don't do a trans 101 and talk about sort of, you know, identities, et cetera, is that in many ways I am a white trans guy who's lived on two different coasts and I have a very specific experience. That is not the experience of trans folks or folks in general who live in the Midwest, people of color, people who are younger or older than I am. And all of those things really, really matter in terms of language. If you are looking at this and this is the first time you have heard things like cisgender or trans or any of these other adjectives that is absolutely fine and I think that it's great that you're on the call. And the next step is really, and even if you're very aware of these things, your next step when really making your, when making your forms or really establishing your presence is to go to your local LGBT community center to get educated on what the trans community in your community really looks like. And if you need help doing that, feel free to email me. I'm always happy to, you know, hook folks up. But these are just my suggestions and I really, I have been in the situation where I have been told as a consumer that somebody somewhere at some point told the builder of a form or of a website that this was an okay way to include trans folks and I look at that and I say that it's not an okay way. Be aware of your local community and it's really a local community and it's communities. There's more than one. And, you know, having strong partnerships with your local LGBT groups or centers can really be helpful. We'll talk a little bit about testing at the end, but just sort of to make folks aware of that. So for example, so if you need to know a user's pronoun and reasons that you may need that is to make an interface easier to navigate, funding purposes, transparency is always really great. For example, to make this process easier, please provide a pronoun. He, him, she, she, her, and then please provide personally just as a point of, just as a point of etiquette, other is othering. When there's, you know, two or three or four options and then there's an other, especially when you're talking about demographic information, it can really, you know, it's not best practices. You can get away with it. But I like, you know, sort of please provide or specify or other words like that. Another example can be, we collect some demographic information for funding. What pronouns do you use? And, you know, what I like about both of these is that it tells the person why you're collecting the information and it asks for the information that you really want and that you're asking for. If you need to know a user's gender identity, for example, it's material to the user's legal issue or again for funding purposes, what gender do you identify as or we're collecting some demographic information for funding, what gender do you identify as. You can do this one and you can do any of these sort of in any way that, you know, your office wants to. I like an open text box when talking about somebody's gender identity. We'll talk about Facebook in just a second. They changed 50 options in their dropdown for somebody's identity was not enough. And granted, that is a different use case than this one. But think about and really, you know, investigate and rather than oftentimes these offerings get really dismissed out of hand, but really think about what would the ramifications be if you did provide an open text box. Talk to your funders about what would it mean if you provided a variety of responses to these questions. How would that work out? And it may be that at the end of the day, that's not a possibility, but, you know, this is one of those things that you can do diligence on in, you know, not a lot of time and make your presence so much more trans inclusive. The last one is that you need to know the gender marker on somebody's legal documents. And this happens. This happens with programs, especially that are doing any kind of name change or gender or gender marker document change. So, and in this case, you know, what is the sex on your birth certificate or court order? Male or female? There are other obviously, you know, this is a very select group of examples, but just, you know, some things to sort of get those thoughts flowing and really starting to think about what you're asking for and how. So some examples from other online platforms. So Facebook, and this actually has to be updated. When I put this together, it provided users over 50 gender identities in a dropdown, which was really great and really, you know, just made national headlines. Everybody heard about it. It was really great. And then they later changed that to just an open text box. So people could really specify their own gender identity, which again was, you know, was a really, really representative major shift in how they, and how these online platforms were asking for things like gender. And then what they did for advertisement purposes, because they still needed to, I mean, their interface requires pronouns, but in reality, we know that it was ad revenue that, you know, 50 plus or, you know, an infinite number of gender identity options does not make for good sellable data. And so what they did was they sold, as they sold advertisers, house what somebody's gender pronoun was, of which you're allowed three options. There's male, there's he, she, and then other. And they use a they for the, for the other, which, you know, allowed is not perfect, but I'm not sure that there is necessarily a perfect in these situations, especially when we're talking about online. But it allowed them to both honor their users, gender identities, as well as provide the ad revenue that they needed for their website. Groove Shark, which is defunct and used to be one of my more favorite music, music sites has identity language, which I really like. So it allowed, you know, you put in your name and then here's a small screenshot of the date of birth and then I identify as, which, you know, I really liked as both an active, as well as a descriptive, descriptive language, rather than saying I am X or Y, this is an identity because this is an identity. You know, that idea of saying that somebody is something talks to an immutable characteristic. Gender is not immutable and really depends on the identity of the person who's carrying the gender. So you've determined sort of what information you're seeking. You've determined if you need that information at all. And you've decided what, if any, questions you're going to ask. And so what's sort of the next step. So this is, you know, flowcharts run amok. So gender neutral language. And there's a pretty easy, pretty easy decision tree where if you are responding to a specific person and you know that person's preferred pronoun, then you use that person's preferred pronoun. Basically in every other situation, you use gender neutral language and you can use gender neutral language even when you know someone's preferred pronoun and you're referring to a specific person. It's really when done well and when there's real thought put into writing in a gender neutral way. It doesn't appear as filtered or as cumbersome as often times it's made out to be where, you know, suddenly you have to replace everything with they. That's not necessarily, you know, the case. And we'll talk about a couple of really interesting examples in just a second. So what to change and what to avoid. So again, focus on the substance or function rather than the gender. Use formal titles rather than gendered prefixes. And again, avoid using pronouns unless you are referring to someone whose pronouns you actually know. And you have more options than they are there or the S in parentheses, HE, which we often time see. So this was listed directly from another article. The citation is in the slide deck which will be available. But this person has rewritten this sentence in a couple of different ways just to highlight a few of the different ways that you can make a sentence gender neutral. You can make the noun plural and in this case they did use the there convention. So a lawyer must diligently represent their client. You can repeat the noun. So a lawyer must diligently represent that lawyer's client. You can omit the pronoun completely which I really like because I like shorter sentences. A lawyer must diligently represent clients. And actually my favorite, especially when we're writing instructions for individuals, a lawyer, as a lawyer you must diligently represent your client as a way to not only use gender neutral language but to also really engage the reader in a different way that they may not necessarily see otherwise. So there are options that are out there. It does become a fun, just sort of intellectual exercise. But so other considerations, when you are thinking through making your online presence as gender and as inclusive to folks as humanly possible. Content testing and engaging in underserved communities to do user testing. Number one, there's a really excellent Web user testing guide, website user testing guide on LSNTAP. I, in full disclosure, I think is excellent in part because I co-authored it. But I still think it's really great. And so if you haven't been thinking through doing user testing throughout your project, this is a really great sort of way to start or place to start. There are these things called AB tests where you have sort of one construction and another sentence construction and people can just choose which one sort of speaks to them. And this is a really great space to really look at engaging with your local LGBT chapters and getting their input and getting real user input around your Web presence. And the trans community in particular because information is so hard to get and is hard to come by. Many of us live isolated in rural communities. Technology and the internet and computer use is something that we're pretty adept at. And if you really look to engage community groups that in turn engage with their, engage with the trans community, you can get a ready-made group of testers to do a variety of testing including looking at being gender inclusive. And then as much as Tally talked about, what are the faces you're using in your outreach? Are they really, are they reflective of the communities that you want using your materials? And are they all the communities that you want in using your services? And also looking at where you're providing your outreach. If you are providing outreach services in just a few sort of niche spaces, you may be missing great opportunities that you can really get other folks to come in and use your services or use your forms or use your online intake or whatever that project is for you. So just sort of general tips as we look to wrap up. Be obvious about how the information is going to be used. If you're going to use that information to, for example, create an avatar or to plead or to be pled in an actual case or for funding purposes, be really transparent with folks who are entering that information. There have been a couple of forms that I've used specifically with the trans community where, for example, when you set the avatar, it has no bearing on what is pled. But people still routinely choose the avatar of the gender they were assigned at birth rather than the gender that they identify as because they're worried or nervous that it's going to really impact the outcome of the pleading. And it's, you know, and it is, and those are two separate things, but it's not always clear that those are two separate things. And even though oftentimes the pushback that, you know, I get is that these are not, you know, when we're talking about somebody who is facing a eviction, this may not be, you know, the most pressing issue. Those little things, those small things to let folks know that you have thought through this as an agency and that their experiences as, in this case, trans people and a variety of identities is really important to you as an agency says volumes and really changes the interactions and the relationships that individuals and communities can have with your agency. So even if it is something, you know, just to create an avatar, if that avatar has no bearing, if the gender of that avatar has no bearing on the outcome of the documents that they're going to produce, it's worth mentioning that. Also thinking about, again, what you actually need and only ask for that. We know that gender especially, but also race, also ethnicity, these are all things that have become really standard on all of our forms. And when we need to ask it, when we're tracking it for specific reasons, whether that's privately for funders, whether that's because you want to see the impact that you have in a particular community, that's great. But just make sure that you're thinking through that, that you're not just asking that because that's the default on the form. And then if you are asking, be open to options. And also make it easy to change that information. When we're talking about things like case management systems where you may have a client who is, you know, who comes back multiple times, making sure that it is easy to change the gender on somebody's form, making sure that it is easy to really be responsive to conditions that are changing in that client's life is really important. Oftentimes, you know, we don't ask and we don't ask everybody, especially when it's an in-person rather than an online, but we're entering information into the case management system. And, you know, even if it's somebody who's come, and especially when it's somebody who's come back multiple times, people just skip that. And that's really, it's really telling not only for the person for whom that skipped, who doesn't get asked that question, but also in contrast who does get asked that question. And it says something really specific about those clients, depending on which they get, you know, kind of shuffled into. And really thinking about, you know, asking at every point, you know, if you are going to ask about someone's gender identity, making sure that that is consistent across all clients, whether they're new or returning, can be really, really important. Yeah, and so that was my last slide. If folks have more questions or if folks want to call out comments that have been made on the chat, that would be great. Thanks so much. Thank you, Xander, and thank you Camille and Tally as well. It's a lot of good information and for those interested, their recording will be available along with the materials on the LSN type website, I believe. And as Xander mentioned, there's a lot of activity in our chat box, so you'll see some links to resources mentioned during the call that you can check out here. And I guess we can start to go through questions. Yeah, so please feel free to type questions in either the chat box or star six to unmute yourself to bring forward questions. We've got a lot of them here also. For people who tried a little bit earlier, the LSN type website was down. We were able to get it back up and I'm giving those links put into the chat and I'll have a link to the slides here in just a second. And there was one actually from Caroline Robinson and Mass Legal that asked if I was saying that we assume we are entitled to know the gender of others or that we are in fact entitled. And I'm saying that we assume that we are entitled to know that that's not something that we are necessarily entitled to know, but there's an assumption there that, you know, that's public information. So just to clarify. And feel free to ask questions of Xander or any of our panelists. I've seen other questions in the chat box that was discussed, but I don't think was answered orally. So I just wanted to read it out. Is there a preference suggestion for using disability versus differently abled, et cetera, or does it depend? Can you repeat it one more time? I think I understand it. Sure. Is there a preference suggestion for using disability versus differently abled, et cetera, or does that depend? I don't know the full answer to that. I think that there is a lot of question about the use of the word disability because it really focuses on impairment. It's also sort of just the language people know and use. So I think that my concern about the word differently abled is that it still puts the sort of the D at the end and it still sort of labels the person. It's an interesting question. I don't know the answer to. I still sort of prefer using people first language. So I'd probably say something that would sound a little awkward of person with different abilities or something like that rather than differently abled. Yeah, I'm definitely with the tally there. Yes, we can hear you. Good. I was on mute for a second and could figure it out. I actually wanted to, I put a couple of comments there, but I think two things. One, people first I think is the right answer with differently abled. I think there was a period in like the 80s or 90s or somewhere or maybe late, yeah, maybe in the 90s where I know that that got into my language. And so I put in the chat that I welcome correction because I think that it's what I found in my interpersonal relations interactions with folks is that folks who are very comfortable and confident in being disabled and being identified with, and I'm going to make all sorts of mistakes here. So I'm just putting it forward to model the fact that we have to sort it out amongst people who can have conversations because if we never make mistakes, we'll never figure it out. But the differently abled piece I think is part generational, and I think part the reaction to folks who in my background did not want to be called disabled or referred to as people with a disability, they're like, no, I'm whatever. But I stand corrected and we'll go with people with disabilities or people with different abilities. I'm sorry, people who are disabled are people with disabilities. Is that sort of where the common understanding is? Yeah, I think just using the people first language. I sent around something that we have, I mean, there's lots of different people first guides. I sent around one guide that we have here in Georgia. Yeah, and Brian, you were going to say something about it? I would definitely say that the people first language is the preferred in the community by far. And think of it as we don't refer to somebody as having a visual disability when they have glasses, we refer to them as having glasses or someone with a wheelchair. So even the disability part of the language is removed at this point and we're more descriptive of a person and how they interact with the world. So like a person who uses a wheelchair. And also choosing when it's necessary to even use that description I think gets also back to, you know, is the reason to use that term. And the law, sometimes like Xander was talking about in his presentation, there's going to be a specific reason. If you're applying for disability benefits, you've got to show that the person has a disability. In my world where I work with the Americans with Disabilities Act, it only applies if the person has a disability. So it's important to indicate why the person meets the eligibility criteria. But lots of times when you're describing someone, you just don't need to go there. Something else that's really kind of cool recently is that there's been a movement to change the symbol of disability so that it's not the sort of static wheelchair, it's an active wheelchair with a person in it who is moving and it's just much more empowering. And I think some of those symbols can also be really powerful. And then it gets into the whole sort of pride movement where a person with a disability has a pride march or something like that where you would talk about the person with the disability because they're proud of it. And so it very much depends on the context. You mentioned the disability symbol. There's a somewhat related question in the chat box. What about images? Are there any emotional images for a male stick figure, a female stick figure wearing a skirt, disability, person in wheelchair? Is there a preference or suggestion for those? And why would those are considered culturally humble? Or again, does it depend on the communities you work with? So this is Xander. And I just wanted to... The symbol of sort of the male stick figure with no dress and the female stick figure with a dress, which is really different, is oftentimes really connected with bathrooms and the lack of a gender neutral bathroom. I don't think... I cannot say... There are specific images that are used oftentimes just locally that do a combination or a difference within sort of a play on those two images, but mostly, especially nationally and et cetera. We don't use those in any way to symbolize the trans community at large. There are some, like I said, some local groups that may, and you may see that locally. Oftentimes, though, that those images, at least as they refer and impact the trans community in particular, are really looking... looked at segregated bathrooms, which is something that... It's the whole mother conversation that we can have. Right. And I will share an example of, I guess, priming that... I mean, I think it's an interesting question. I was in a facilitation workshop and the materials had different images of different people, like cartoons or images. And one of the images was of a person in a wheelchair. And that was a wonderful prime for me because it was normalizing and putting as, like, part of the backdrop. I don't usually see pictures of people in wheelchairs in something that's not specifically related to disability issues. And so that's fine, but then for folks who have other ability... I mean, who have other disabilities, people who are blind, who are deaf, who may have mental disabilities, wheelchair doesn't speak for them. And so I'm not sure what the approach is for that, but I do want to say that the idea of cultural humility is really about the process that you go through to make sure you're asking the right questions. Well, and this also goes to getting to know people in their communities. And I think it's a great question. It's one I'm going to take back to the disability community around symbols. I'm going to send everyone just a short link to an article about the new disability symbol that's being used, but it's certainly someone in a wheelchair. It's sort of the common... just, you know, for, like, parking and things like that that's used, but, you know, I think that that's the reason you have these conversations and we all get educated and particularly we get educated about the areas that we don't focus on or the populations and people that we don't aren't around as much as we should be maybe. And if I can remind that... Oh, sorry. I was going to say that's cultural humility, right? Being able to say, okay, this is what I know, this is what I don't know, what can I learn from you? As opposed to taking a defensive posture. That's another example. I think that was Brian. Sorry if I cut you off. Oh, I just wanted to let people know as we're getting close to the end here, we still have a few minutes for discussion, but the survey is there. This has been a new topic for us. We greatly appreciate people's feedback on it. Also, I wanted to emphasize Tally's point from earlier and the usability guide that Xander put forward. It is so much easier to design these things in at the beginning. LSMTAP is always willing to take a look at a project that you're working on anytime in the development cycle and give you feedback on usability or accessibility. Often though, I'm brought in at the very end of a project in which someone's looking for a stamp of approval and it means redesigning major pieces. Earlier, we can get involved helping out on the feedback side, the less it's going to cost in development time to make things accessible, usable, and to really embed these best practices into a project. Well, I'm grateful that this topic was raised and it was fantastic to discuss it. I do also want to give a shout out. Jillian put it in a comment, but Pro BonoNet has just been fabulous to work with on the accessibility. I think that one of the things that all of us fear is doing it wrong, but it's much easier to move forward if we just get into it and make the mistakes along the way and fix them and then just stand back and not do them. Absolutely. Just really to both piggyback off of that and also answer one question, there was a question that came in about when you have something like a government form where you're helping people navigate through an online tool. How do you explain, especially when they're not your forms, the lack of options? Something just to think about as a default is just being transparent about what's happening and usually the on-censor is the simplest and oftentimes allows you to really tailor that to be the best. For example, this government form only provides two options for gender identity. It identifies it as a government form as a form that's not yours and also acknowledges its limitations. I think for a lot of us, we educate ourselves and we really do our best to do right by these communities and to just be really transparent about what those limitations are and about all of those efforts to really try to be as cognizant as possible. Thanks, Sandra. I think we have time for maybe one more question. I know that Caroline had a question. She wanted to remind us about plain language, easy reading, and translations. There are some of the best resources out there for plain language. It has definitely helped us also when designing things for our mobile. Plain language has been very useful there also for just being concise. And it certainly helps with accessibility as well. That's a great point. And I mean, and the one thing that I will say is, you know, especially around things like gender-neutral language, et cetera, a lot of the pushback is that it makes things harder to read and sort of not in plain language. And for folks who, you know, who really see that and think that, see that as a challenge. I mean, there are ways that you can make this accessible and easy to read and easy to understand. And it is true that there may be, you know, a couple of words here and there that are a little bit inside baseball, if you will. But, you know, and that really is the challenge and the challenge of making sure that we are inclusive. It's not necessarily easy. It's worth the time and it's worth the effort, but it does take, you know, real thought, and it can absolutely be done. So I just sort of wanted to put that out there because that is a piece that I get sort of pushed back on a lot. But. And also just really quickly, if you're doing stuff around gender, gender things within and looking to translate that, again, make sure you get input from your local communities that are speakers of the language within the trans community because not everything translates all the time. So just putting that out there. Well, thank you guys so much for, or thank you everyone so much for putting on this presentation today. We're very happy to have you here. Thank you for a button up for organizing this and all the speakers.