RE: IDCG ideas for consideration for building an action plan

Thanks, Judy

This is an excellent list.

I think another area for W3C to explore is member recruitment. This may be what you intended with outreach. W3C does not necessarily have much say about which individuals from a member organization participate in groups, but W3C does a lot of active recruitment. Is there active recruitment in Africa? South and Central America? Are we reaching out to organizations that promote diversity within their organizations?

Thanks,
Tzviya

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2020 2:18 AM
To: public-idcg@w3.org
Subject: IDCG ideas for consideration for building an action plan


Leonie, thanks for pulling together a meeting of the Inclusion and Diversity Community Group.

All, I'm particularly hoping we can discuss elements of a multi-point plan of action, even if part of our discussion is focused on a possible W3C statement.

It may seem hard at first to figure out what W3C can do for an action plan given that we're an international technology consortium. But on other aspects of diversity, including disability and gender, W3C has made some progress over the years, even though we often questioned whether any particular step would have an impact, and even though there's lots more to do. On racial justice issues I'm hoping that we can think broadly when considering possible actions across the W3C community. Here are some possible ideas to brainstorm on, mostly phrased as questions. I'd welcome discussion on these on the IDCG list, in meetings, and in any other W3C fora, and also an expansion of an ideas list that might provide us good options to turn into an action plan. Some of these repeat a few things already mentioned on the list, and I also haven't captured them all.

1. Principles and practices: W3C has the TAG's Ethical Web Principles [1]; does anything in that that need updating to better capture current issues? W3C also has a proposed new version of the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC) [2] currently under Advisory Committee review, which goes into more detail on racism than the previous version.

2. Learning: There are many reading lists which have useful resources for learning about racism. It can also be useful to look specifically at the intersection of racism and technology, such as this list from Venture Beat [3]. Are there other reading lists on racism and technology that we could pull together, and perhaps curate a list that could serve as a resource for the web community?

3. Discussion: We can let W3C colleagues know about discussions within the Inclusion and Diversity Community Group  [4], and also encourage discussions in other W3C settings. For instance, do we want to promote this as a discussion topic for our upcoming TPAC? Other events?

4. Participation: W3C doesn't do a lot of hiring, but occasionally does, and many of our member organizations do. Do hiring managers know where to reach out to to increase the diversity of candidate pools, and could that information be shared?

5. Outreach: What conferences and events do we all show up to, and with what messages? Early on a few women in standards organizations started showing up to conferences such as the Grace Hopper Conference on Women and Computing, and talking to women engineers about what's so compelling about working in standards organizations. They had not heard of these opportunities from their managers or colleagues, and it took some spreading the word. Maybe finding different venues and talking about participation in standards organizations would be relevant around race as well.

6. Work areas: Are there any particular topics or issues that we're missing work on, such as AI bias around race? And looking at intersectional issues may be useful as well -- for instance, the intersection of racial and cultural issues with disability can doubly disenfranchise people from the training and mentoring opportunities that help bring people into the field. Are there intersections between race and other areas of W3C work that we could explore?

7. Individuals, organizations and communities: People have already raised ideas around diversity scholarships, and/or equipment support, for individuals. Could we broaden this approach to encouraging the web community to look for coaching, mentoring, partnering and support opportunities with local community organizations that could help feed a pipeline of engagement?

8. International context: Anti-black racism is an issue in many countries especially at this moment, and needs focused attention. But we should probably also continue to work on how this fits within braoder diversity issues that that W3C has worked on worldwide.

9. Action Plan? Some of these ideas may not be a good fit for W3C, and a lot of other good ideas may be missing. If we think ahead a year, what kind of progress would we want to be able report, and what among these possibilities -- or other possibilities -- might help get us there? Anyone interested in starting to build an action plan from these or similar ideas?

- Judy

Refs

  1.  W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles: https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles-20191204

  2.  Proposed new version of Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct: https://www.w3.org/2020/05/CEPC

  3.  Some essential reading and research on race and technology: https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/02/some-essential-reading-and-research-on-race-and-technology/

  4.  Inclusion and Diversity Community Group (IDCG): https://www.w3.org/community/idcg<https://www.w3.org/community/idcg/>



--

Judy Brewer

Director, Web Accessibility Initiative

at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

105 Broadway, Room 7-128, MIT/CSAIL

Cambridge MA 02142 USA

www.w3.org/WAI/<http://www.w3.org/WAI/>