“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 unlikely that someone who has a significant VI will use a colour based reference to remember someone. It would become a difficult memory game to remember everyone’s voices and their jumper colours (and not that helpful really). People saying their name and their job title would be most useful and I know my VI colleague would then be able to remember their voice as opposed to be concerned about their jumper or their hair.

The most useful thing is probably to just say your name before you speak each time to reinforce who you are so the person with VI can link name to voice. Eg ‘Jenna here, can I just ask…’ or ‘Claire speaking, when I competed this task…’ etc

also, my friend with VI doesn’t put her camera on in meetings because of how close she has to go to the screen in order to navigate it (she has some functional vision). So ordering everyone to have cameras on would be stressful for her because she would be very conscious of the fact that all youd see would be a close up of her eyes and nose.

I always think, when confronted with this kind of bollocks, that these people don't have enough actual work to keep them busy.

If its all self indenifical just say what you like.

"One is Bumblebee, pronouns one/her greatness, 6ft blonde, stunning. massiveness of ones tits is only outdone by the massiveness of ones brain.

Sounds like the start of a futuristic 12 step meeting.

Yes, it’s creating more problems than it solves. It also seems like quite outdated advice. Firstly, it’s now generally accepted that you shouldn’t force people to give their pronouns, the rationale being that this could result in forcing people to either out or misgender themselves. It can also be very triggering for some people to have to describe their physical features, the relevance of which is surely questionable in most professional environments anyway. I would be interested in hearing from blind people about whether this has any practical value for them besides idle interest.

That's useful and good to know - thanks!

Read the research on stereotype threat - it's very interesting - it's not 'being female' that results in the bad maths result, it's reminding/emphasising (eg. by making them say it out loud) that causes the extra effect.

I'm visually impaired and it wouldn't be useful for me because I can see people on a screen, it could be for others though I suppose. However, the likelihood of someone with a VI being in the meeting is probably very small so it does seem like a massive waste of time.

The only time I’ve ever had to do this in a meeting was to accommodate a blind participant. Nothing to do with pronouns or suchlike.

What difference does it make re the colour of the participants' skin? Why does anyone need to know?

In our meetings at work, we do a 'restorative question', which is something silly like 'Whats your favourite childhood sweet/ or perfect holiday destination' . It's much better at making you remember people and less stressful than having to describe yourself

If someone is without good sight, maybe OK, otherwise I'd be inclined to the 'let's get on with the meeting' response. Even more so if you've had the 'let's give it a couple of minutes' for those who are latecomers (start on time every time and press record and that goes away).

If there’s 20 people in a meeting like that, 19 will be thinking WTF and where did I go wrong with my life to end up here. The one remaining will be getting off on a tiny bit of power to make everyone cringe and have the employee handbook at the ready to punish dissenters. I don’t know why we indulge these crackpots.

It's not very inclusive to anyone with red-green colour blindness - another opportunity to stress about misnaming colours. Ditto for anyone with severe visual impairment who is asked to self-describe including what colour they are wearing - when they may not be able to perceive the colour

Wait until you're a greying older lady (past middle-aged), you may not be quite so comfortable describing yourself!

Why would you feel the need to give your age? If you're greying and don't want to draw attention to it, don't mention your hair colour - just give length/style - and say what colour your clothes are.

I was clearly matching with what the poster I quoted had said - she said she'd happily describe herself as a 'middle aged white female with brown hair'. My equivalent would be 'old white female with grey hair'.

But I see what you are suggesting, i.e. that I could give a bit of a not-particularly-descriptive-description: 'I'm a white female, with short hair'.

I'm wondering what on earth will come next. Perhaps a brief biography about our backgrounds? 'My name's X and I was the first in my family to attend Uni, I grew up in a single-parent working class household in a low-income area of X city'.

Exactly... you can keep going on with 'Oh, but there's not that many people it will help' - but even if that's true, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try to include them. Jeez, it's literally another 10 seconds from each person to give some context. It happened a lot at my last employer, which was based in American and they did it on most of the international big calls and I thought it was a very positive thing, but apparently I'm in a minority here.

As a ND person I find the constant use of videos totally overwhelming and turn off incoming video and just listen to people's voices. Never had a problem remembering who said what.

You could elaborate on that without straying into describing your physical characteristics in detail "I'm a white female with wavy hair in a short bob, I'm wearing a pink blouse and a black cardigan" would work.

If someone in a meeting was actually visually impaired, and had asked for this accommodation, then I’d be really happy to do it. Otherwise I’d think it was ridiculous.

I spend a fair chunk of my working life in the charity sector and this sort of batshittery is rife!

Because it's a pointless frame if reference. You might remember me by the visual clue of my blue jumper, the VI person won't because they can't see it!

Why does someone need to say their skin colour?! Surely that shouldn't matter. The only time it would was if someone wanted to make racist assumptions.

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