“Self description for inclusive meetings” What fresh hell is this?

[BlueOrangeRed]

AIBU to not understand this at all? I’ve just attended an online event with around 20 people, from a mix of organisations.

The three organisers of the event introduced themselves by name then followed up with descriptions of themselves along the lines of “My pronouns are she/her. I’m a white woman in my mid thirties. I have blonde hair and am wearing a blue top”

A quick google afterwards came up with the following: “For inclusive meetings, a self-description offers context for visually impaired attendees, focusing on key identifiers like Name, Role, Pronouns, and brief visual cues (gender, skin tone, hair, clothing/accessories, background), keeping it concise (1-2 sentences) and optional, to help everyone feel seen and reduce assumptions. Start with your name and role, then add pronouns (she/her, he/him, they/them) and a quick visual detail like "brown skin, bald head, black hoodie," ensuring it's about access, not performance

It will be a cold day in hell before I start introducing myself like this. Leaving aside the foregrounding of pronouns issue, I can see zero benefits, but lots of pitfalls, about reminding everyone in a meeting that I’m a woman in my early fifties. I would also hate it if I was the youngest colleague there, for example. Or the only non white participant.

I’ve never experienced this before. Is this the latest thing to tick some inclusivity box, and for people to perform some virtue signalling? Because the cynic in me really can’t see how it will help anyone. Do visually impaired people find these kind of descriptions helpful?

Or am I just hopelessly out of touch? I don’t go to many events so maybe I am and this kind of thing is now the norm.

I’m in a knitting group with a blind member. We’ve all got very much better at describing things so she doesn’t get left out and I am absolutely in favour of doing that. (It’s kind of fun too and it helps us see some things differently, we have all benefited from the shift in perception.)
However she lets us know what sort of information she needs and it has never been bland id pol descriptions of everyone’s hair and skin colour! We describe clothes if someone is wearing something interesting that we’re all talking about but imagine how dull it would be if we all had to list what colour top we were wearing every week 😬

Only if there are visually impaired attendees surely?

@Kreepture ah, thanks for explaining that

I have literally only once been in such a meeting in my life (and everyone was kind of cowering away, it was awful, some enforced diversity thing) so luckily none of this is applicable in my case.

i'm quite happy to say "I'm Emerald, I'm wearing a green top" or whatever

aka: i don't understand the difference between a social event and a work meeting, and why the needs of the people attending might be different.

Right?!

'I'm owly and i treat all people with respect without regard to what that person looks like, how they dress or how they identify and I object to this fucking shit'

Sounds like something an organisation I used to work at would do. They were so ‘inclusion’ based but funnily enough they were 98% white British. Absolutely embarrassing when they would preach on about inclusion whilst obviously not attracting a diverse workforce.

This would have come from some woke idea, that you can’t always assume by looking if someone is a white female or whatever.

As someone who is disabled, yeah.. that'd be LOVELY.

Doesn't work like that though.

I think I would just say “I’m BlueOrangRed and I’m a person”.

Or, even better, maybe everyone should have their cameras off so everyone is being treated equitably?

It’s very common in my part of the third sector. It’s a form of audio description. People who are good at it also audio describe any slides they use, and I’ve heard this done quite smoothly by good speakers.

l dont say the im a woman bit nor my ethnicity or age. And I would defend my right not to give any of those protected characteristics. I just say something like I’ve got straight brown hair and a blue jumper.

With regards to process put in place for inclusivity around those with disabilities.

If you don't understand it, and it's of no use to you, then it obviously isn't FOR you.

Surely they would only do things for the benefit of visually impaired attendees if there were actually any likely to be attending. If there only 20 attendees then maybe they knew one or more were. It also sounds like no one was asking attendees to describe themselves or anyone forced to talk about their skin colour against their will.

I follow a young blind man on SM and it’s sad seeing how much the world is set up for sighted people. I think a no-pressure offer to describe yourself for the benefit of someone who never gets to actually see a face is probably quite meaningful for them

It's fair to ask though. I mean, these are the days of councils painting zebra crossings in rainbow colours DESPITE making things worse for blind people. I think it's fair to question stuff that we don't understand in case it raises the fact that a given thing is not actually helping anyone

[Edit for typo]

No-one minds people asking. its taking the piss out of something done to help people that i take offence to.

Do you know if anyone at a meeting has visual impairment? Probably not. Doing this as standard means you're not putting the effort on the disabled person to have to say "I'm disabled, accomodate me please" at the beginning of every meeting. And it's not just for people who are disabled, lots of us have eye sight changes or lose sight as we age or are between glasses prescriptions. If all I can see on the webcam is blurry brown and blue, and that shape says "Hi I'm BlackCat the manager, I have brown hair and a blue top" then next time blury brown and blue pops up I know that's BlackCat the manager.

What a load of tosh.

Except that's not just how it works - if you make someone emphasise their difference, they themselves behave differently too, as do the people who heard it - have a look at stereotype threat - it's a real effect, which is worse when people are made to point out their attributes which have negative stereotypes.

The classic is reminding girls that they are girls makes them perform worse in maths tests.

Hi, I'm pavement

I'm here because I am responsible for X and need to learn about y

I'm not a narcissist so I don't think it's important that you know anything about me

I'm not visually impaired but I love radio and I don't need to know what people look like. I tell them apart by their voices

Well it must take quite a lot of time although I have been in lots of meetings where very long introductions would be great, less meetings to endure.

Was there anyone visually impaired in the meeting?

Same here! I once failed to recognise my own brother!

I really cannot imagine how describing what you look like helps a visually impaired person . As pp have said, using you name each time you speak is far more useful in helping them know who's speaking and remember the sound of your voice.

I don't see why this affects people so much.

Oh no! Horror! Someone identifies differently than how they were identified at birth! It literally doesn't affect you whatsoever. Yes, there are some trans women (assigned male at birth) who are creepy fucking predators, but that is not the majority of them. It's a minority within a minority. They'd still be creepy fucking predators if they identified as the gender they were assigned at birth (or, their biological sex, if people are going to nitpick).

And before you say that this isn't the point of the post - it is. The point of OP's post is to get people in a rage about how people identify.

If you care so much about other people's genitals, then you have bigger problems than you think.

Do I think people should HAVE to state their pronouns in order to feel or be accepted? Absolutely not. They should be accepted anyway. But that's the world we live in, unfortunately.

People with visual impairments which include colour aren't catered for at all, then...