Re: Sensitivity training

On 02/11/2019 06:37, Charles 'chaals' (McCathie) Nevile wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 20:17:28 +0100, Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org> wrote:
> 
>> Leonie, thanks for introducing the topic. I think it could be useful 
>> for us to offer something on this.
>> [...]
>> And I think that a key word on this would be "offer."
> 
> And Vlad noted that this can be poorly received when it is used as an 
> indicator that someone is doing something wrong.
> 
> So, some thoughts...
> 
> First, +1 Léonie, this seems like a good idea and we should be following 
> it up.
> 
> Naming *is* hard, but I think that something about "inclusive" is good 
> enough to convey what we mean. I don't object to adding "ally" although 
> I am less sold on it - it seems a very American-specific term to me so I 
> don't know how well it translates in a second-language context. Maybe if 
> we talk about looking at best practices, and workshops rather than 
> training, we convey more sense of why this is relevant to everyone and 
> not some punishment.
> 

I also have some concern about the "ally" suffix, from the point of view 
of readability for people with certain cognitive disabilities.

> I've been through a few of these (W3C was a rare workplace since the 
> mid-90s where I didn't have to do one). There are often pieces of it 
> that feel like being taught to walk again, but there is usually also 
> stuff that makes it worthwhile.
> 
> I would like us to be *asking* all chairs and team contacts to do 
> whatever we come up with, and offering it to the community at large. 
> Among other things it is some years since we did any chair training, and 
> we take on new chairs. We should be working to actively support people 
> to learn demonstrable chairing skills - inter alia, it's an incentive to 
> participate, as well as important to meeting our own needs.

I agree with asking chairs to do this, rather than just offering it and 
hoping. Offering it to the community seems like a good idea - and 
assuming you meant the community at large, rather than just the W3C 
community, I think it would be a valuable resource with a much wider 
impact.

> 
> (And people who think they know this stuff so well they have nothing to 
> learn about it are probably demonstrating a warning sign that they're 
> not quite as sensitive as they think...)
> 
> However, I think this is something we want to look hard at how we 
> develop. The two major concerns for us are cost and quality. I think we 
> cannot afford to sacrifice quality, but that introduces a question of cost.

Or we look to what already exists. Would any member organisations be 
willing to share their inclusion and diversity training materials? What 
materials are in the public domain that we might use and/or draw on?

> 
> There are a lot of axes of inclusion directly relevant to W3C. Taking up 
> some training that didn't cover all the obvious ones we have like 
> gender, language, culture of discussion / resolution of disagreement, 
> ensuring people with disabilities can participate equally, and so on, 
> would be a serious failure.
> 

Agreed.

Léonie.

> cheers
> 
> Chaals
> 

-- 
Director @TetraLogical

Received on Sunday, 3 November 2019 18:34:46 UTC