“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.

It’s interesting that you had that experience. I think some people have got to a point where they are self-conscious about saying that someone is black.

I was once at a large meeting and a particular person needed help in a particular, discreet way. I was speaking to a colleague to alert them to this because she was going to be in his group, that he was leading. The colleague, who is American, asked how he was going to be able to identify this person easily so that he could support her without it being obvious. I said “oh, that’s easy, she is the only young woman who is black.” My colleague visibly flinched at this.

Coincidentally, I was also working with another, English, senior colleague who is well known in the field and who was black. Actually, he still is black. I asked him if I’d been wrong to identify the young woman in this way and his reply that it was absolutely not wrong, and it was unfortunate that people had begun to think that it was a description that simply shouldn’t be said. Nevertheless, I do understand that some people are now so hypersensitive to racial discrimination and want to avoid being thought of as being discriminatory, that they now go out of their way to avoid saying that someone is black.

It seems to me, that it is racist to avoid describing someone as what they are because that suggests that it is shameful or wrong, or I don’t know what? The other thing that I have noticed is that people will describe someone as the “black guy” but not the “black man”. This does require some thinking about.

I'm absolutely on board with that if there is (or conceivably could be) someone who's visually impaired in the meeting, but given that the population of working-age people in the UK is c.34.2 million (of course not all of these will actually be employed) and the population of working-age people with visual impairments is c.84,500 - of whom only 1/4 are employed, so about 21,000 - the chances are pretty small, in which case it just becomes ridiculous virtue-signalling which could draw attention to aspects that people might prefer to remain unspoken (such as being the only black person, or the only middle-aged woman in the room).

FFS.

Ughh, I'd have to say 'I have 50/50 grey hair, it used to be brown but I don't dye it and the grey has really taken over in recent years, and am wearing a black top'

I'm not massively keen to draw attention to my advancing years at the start of a professional meeting, thanks very much.

Plus there are often several of us wearing a black top or dress so it wouldn't be that helpful. You don't see many meetings where one person is wearing bright pink, another in bright yellow and so on.

They dont need to know age , sex or any other sensitive information that people may not want to have focus on their own protected characteristics.

A name and descriptor of clothing colour is sufficient

And pronouns?? Come off it

It’s downright rude actually, to encourage everyone to describe themselves by appearances. The irony of the “identity” movement repeatedly just reducing everyone to a set of stereotypes is painful tbh.

So if you introduce yourself as Andy, or Joe, or Vic, on camera, or have an non english name that someone unfamiliar wouldn't know as commonly belonging to a female, and they refer to you as a man, you'd rather embarrass the disabled person by correcting them, having someone else correct them, or letting everyone laugh at them for not realising?

It might not be important to you. To them, it might be the difference between feeling laughed at/humiliated in a setting where theyre already disadvantaged, and being treated like everyone else, who can already SEE you're a woman.

What if you're blonde wearing a black top but two other women have already described themselves as blonde with a black top? Does the person introduced later need to come up with a differentiating feature or is it find to say "and I'm another blonde white woman with a black top"?

It's a brave new world where companies are being overtaken and hollowed out by activists - see EDI/DIE, Jaguar, Nike, Budweiser.

If it’s anything like my company this will just give us a reason to hire another three people in HR to sit around and do nothing of any substance.

I operate a strict “camera off” policy and I don’t have a profile picture of myself on Teams. Nobody needs to know what I look like and they certainly don’t need to know what I’m wearing!

It would be very unusual to not hear that a speaker is male or female

I'm curious - when referring to a group of people, which pronouns do you suggest we use (ararhgh - one uses.. nope, I use? Nope still gender neutral, and that's just for one of me, not even a group!!)?

Or should we do that thing they do in gendered languages, where a group of just women uses the feminine pronoun, but add one bloke and we use the male one? Seems a bit sexist to me - plus, if you want to obey internal gender rather than grammatical gender based on sex, it's basically impossible so we'd end up using masculine all the time.

Of course, this is actually (surprise surprise) derailing the discussion, and taking it away from disabilities (which is what it was about) and onto pronouns and trans (hence the birb meme)

I'm sorry if I come across as hostile (or sarcastic, mainly it's amused and sarcastic). I'm just sick of posts about disabilities being derailed by people who are concerned because women exist and are separate to men (no matter how they feel)

Christ, who do you work with that they would humiliate you because you thought 'Mike' was a man when she was actually a woman (a situation I've been in, it was fine, no-one cared - including Mike)

I don't remember if I figured it out because someone said 'she' in an email or I saw her or heard her first - but no embarrassment necessary, no humiliation.

I watched a documentary once about previously blind people have procedures which enabled sight.

It was fascinating. As PP said, they had no frame of reference so even though the had sight, they had to 'learn to see' because even though they could see things, they had no idea what anything was until it was explained and they touched it so could identify a table, the sky, etc

They were all also really disappointed to the point some became depressed because the ideas they had about things were much better than the reality of what they actually looked like.

But cameras off can be inclusive for others - people with social anxiety disorders for example.

So who wins?

This is why it gets complicated when trying to be inclusive. It can get bigger and bigger.

Quickest way to solve it if there’s a visually impaired person on the call is to just switch camera off. Then no one can see what anyone looks like and the important stuff can be discussed.

Indeed - similar to trigger warnings. No evidence base they achieve their intended aim and indeed some evidence they may do the opposite. And yet society is now wedded to them, presumably because they 'feel' like they may be helpful. I presume there is no evidence base for self description being introduced - it just felt like a good idea.

I wrote a comment on a feedback form to a large funder about this, it made me really uncomfortable, particularly younger women having to describe themselves on screen to a webinar of unknown people, and in some cases describing their homes behind them (I don’t care what colour your toaster is). I can’t be the only person for whom, “Tell me what you’re wearing” has been part of sexual coercion and abuse.

This seems off to me. It seems counterproductive to me to be specifically drawing attention to or highlighting protected characteristics. Yes I know sighted people can see your skin colour or take a guess at your age, but why do we need to declare those things like they matter? 99% of the time they’re irrelevant to the meeting.

Why would anyone refer to someone as a he or she in a meeting?
Surely, on the very very rare occasion that you must refer back to someone you use their actual name.
So if someone needs to mention me they would say Sparkle.
The having to use she/he is bs.

There might not be at that meeting, but if it is second nature to do it every time then when there is, it’s just normal.
bare in mind you can’t always tell if a person has a VI just by looking at them either. My sister is registered sight impaired and there are people she works with who don’t know it, she would find these kind of descriptors helpful because she would know who was speaking and could link the things she can see to the voice, which helps a lot.

Thanks! Tbh it’s my least favourite song on the album, but my favourite bridge so it’s a dilemma!

This must surely only be of assistance to a tiny number of people - those that once had vision but are now totally blind. Those that have been blind from birth would have no frame of reference for colours. And if you are partially sighted the thing you can make out is blobs of colour. This sounds like pointless virtue signalling. And it’s made worse because studies have shown that pointing out you are a woman increases discriminatory behaviour.

It happens on larger meetings I'm in sometimes. "I'm going to talk about xyz then next up we have Simon who's been doing great work with dolphins. Simon's got some exciting new data to share with us and I think he's also introducing a new procedure for nominating Dolphin of the Year, is that right Simon? Is he on the call yet?"

Whatever your views on pronouns they do get used in natural speech.

I haven't read the whole thread but I am visually impaired and have a job that involves a lot of meetings, in a huge company where I'm expected to meet and work with lots of different people.

I'm also part of a group of nearly 15 sight impaired people who are working in various fields, with various levels of sight loss.

Never had anyone do this in a meeting before, tbh I've only heard 2 people in 15 years do the pronoun thing either, it's quite a kind thought but the response on this thread show why disabled people have bigger fish to fry in terms of workplace ablism.

'Was there any visually impaired people on the call? If not it was pointless'

How do you know if someone is visually impaired? Are you looking for their guide dog in the background? Do you think they will be wearing sunglasses? Waving a white stick about? Many people have no idea I'm visually impaired.

'I'll just describe myself as a tall, blond, stunner'

Do you often lie to people who can't see if you are telling the truth? Is it more important to make a point than to provide factual information to a disabled person?

'I'm a -insert long waffly self deprecating description-'

This initiative is like providing alternative text for photos, something that is actually very genuinely inclusive to people who are sight impaired. Are you not aware of how to provide a factual description of an image? If you genuinely are not, and this isn't just a way of making the description about you, rather than for the sight impaired person, you can refer to this guide from the RNIB.

https://www.rnib.org.uk/campaign-with-us/alt-text-campaign/how-can-i-write-alt-text/

'Why would I want to single myself out as a woman/why would we want to point out one person is a different skin colour'

Well why does the disabled person have to be the one to stick their head out and disclose their disability, its a protected characteristic too.

Ultimately those of us who are sight impaired and working have and will continue to find ways to adapt regardless of what inclusive policies are put in place, but only 1 in 4 people with sight loss are in paid employment. There is a divide between people who have been sight impaired since birth/childhood and those who have lost their sight as an adult. The majority of these who are not in employment are people who have experienced sight loss as an adult and had to give up work because they couldn't cope, if policies like this help with workplace retention then that can only be a plus.