Better UX writing for intersectional inclusion

Guide
Written By Better Standards Club

Introduction

This guide was written by the Better Standards Club for:

  • UX writers

  • Content designers

  • Anyone who writes words in digital products and wants to raise their standards

In it you will find:

  • A short introduction to intersectionality and what it means in the context of UX writing.

  • Basic guidance on how to conduct or take part in inclusive user research.

  • An overview of best practices to start writing content for everyone.

This guide is by no means complete or exhaustive. It only aims at being a starting point on your journey to create better content for your users.

Intersectionality and UX writing

Intersectionality is a term coined by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw who defines it as:

“A lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigration status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.”

In other words, intersectionality acknowledges that:

  • People can hold several marginalized identities.

  • Holding several marginalized identities multiplies someone's discrimination and inequality experience.

In digital products, content can and still very often discriminates against marginalized people. For example:

  • When it addresses or refers to users in a way that doesn’t match their gender identity.

  • When it is microaggressive.

  • When it is inaccessible.

  • When it is all the above at the same time.

The consequences of these discriminations are well documented by research and the press:

As a UX writer, you can foster social change by writing content that works for everyone. This guide aims at giving you a few tools to start writing with an intersectional lens.

Understanding your audience

Inclusive UX writing starts with inclusive user research. To write for all users, you must consider the needs and pain points of all identities, abilities, and backgrounds.

To be inclusive, user research should ideally:

  • Be carried out by a diverse and psychologically safe team.

  • Take into account existing internal or external user research.

  • Intentionally include users that belong to marginalized communities.

  • Be accessible to all stakeholders involved in product development.

As a content person, you may have little control over the above. But knowing what inclusive user research looks like can help you to:

  • Spot potential bias in the data you are working with.

  • Identify unintentional exclusion in the research process.

  • Advocate for better user research in your team or organization.

The “Diverse Participation” chapter of the Inclusive Innovation Playbook by Diversily can help guide your efforts towards ensuring your user research is inclusive.

Best practices for intersectional inclusion in UX writing

With inclusive user research, the following best practices can help you reflect on:

  • How to write for all users.

  • Which parts of your product have the potential to discriminate.

They might also serve as a basis to start an inclusive writing style guide or an inclusive content design system tailored to your product.

General rule

If you are not part of a marginalized community, always double-check you are not using any disrespectful, outdated, or reclaimed term when referring to that community.
This can be done for example by having a direct colleague from the community proofread you. Using an inclusive language tool such as Grammarly or Witty might also be helpful to spot potentially problematic terms.

Gender-inclusive writing

In digital products, gender generally comes about when addressing the user or referring to them in the interface. For the most inclusive user experience, users should ideally be addressed and referred to with their correct pronouns. 

Yet, most products on the market still use the binary “male” and “female” options for users to identify themselves. Some products even address and refer to users with the masculine by default. As a content person, you might not be in a position to change the way your product works. But gender-inclusive writing can already help you create a more inclusive experience for your users of marginalized genders.

For example, you can address users directly by their name or “you” instead of using titles such as “Mr” or “Mrs.” By not gendering users altogether, you decrease the risk of misgendering them.

Using gender-neutral language will also make users feel generally more included and welcomed in your product. Instead of using “he/she” to refer to someone in the interface, you can for example use the singular “they” as a default. For groups of people, use a neutral term like “everyone,” “folks,” or “friends” instead of “men,” “women,” or the commonly used “guys.”

These workarounds are far from the only ones you can use and do not cover the unique challenges you might encounter if you are writing in a gendered language. The Gender-Inclusive Language Project is a good resource to check out for more strategies, specifically in gendered languages.

Note: If you are writing in English and your product is localized by a machine, gender-neutral language is likely to generate biased translations. Fairslator can help remove this bias in German, French, Czech, and Irish.

Writing to include LGBTQIA+ people

A lot of digital products on the market still contain heteronormative language that contributes to the marginalization of LGBTQIA+ people. Here, inclusive writing means normalizing through language:

  • The different ways people love and live their lives.

  • The way they experience their gender and body.

Using neutral terms such as “partner” and “spouse” instead of “boyfriend/girlfriend” or “husband/wife” is a great way to recognize that not every couple or partnership consists of a man and a woman. “Parent” and “caregiver” are also great alternatives to “father” and “mother” to acknowledge that all sorts of family structures exist.

In digital products related to healthcare, it is especially important to pay attention to the vocabulary used to describe bodies. For example, the words gender and sex do not have the same meaning and you should be mindful of which one to use when requesting information from users. Using gender-neutral words and phrases such as “menstruating people,” “pregnant people,” or “chestfeeding” to refer to body experiences is also extremely important here to include people of all genders.

The LGBTQIA+ Encyclopedia from Clue is a good resource to check out to get more familiar with the body and gender experiences of LGBTQIA+ people. The GLAAD Media Reference Guide is also a good general reference to check if you are unsure of what terms to use to refer to the LGBTQIA+ community.

Anti-racist writing

Racism is deeply embedded in language, in ways we don’t always think about. In digital products, anti-racist writing consists in intentionally erasing words that perpetuate structural racism and cause harm to racialized users.

For example, a lot of products still contain terms that perpetuate the idea that “black” is bad and “white” is good, such as “blacklist” and “whitelist.” An anti-racist writing approach would consist in replacing these terms with neutral ones, such as “allow” and “block.”

Culturally appropriative words are another example of terms that are worth looking at in an interface. If your product is not designed by and for a racialized community, using words coined by the community can be seen as exploitative. Commonly used appropriative words include “spirit animal,” “guru,” “ninja,” and “tribe,” for example. Replace them with what they are supposed to mean in your product. For example, if your product uses “ninja” to mean “expert,” use “expert.”

Anti-racist writing can mean different things and take different forms. It is ultimately up to you to define what language has the potential to be harmful in your product and how you want to go about it. The anti-racist language principles from the Intuit content design system are a good resource to check out as a starting point for this work.

Decolonial writing

Colonization has shaped how we see and refer to the world in many ways. Have you ever thought about how we often use the word “America” to mean “United States”? This is what is called eurocentrism, a biased worldview that favors Western civilization over non-Western ones. 

Decolonial writing consists in eliminating eurocentric language to shift power back to the populations affected by colonization. By reshaping our language, we can reframe how we think about geography and what we consider human progress.

In a digital product, this could mean for example paying specific attention to how you refer to countries. Terms such as “developing” or “third-world countries” reinforce the idea that some countries are more “developed” than others. When referring to groups of countries, name them directly or use neutral expressions such as “Global North” and “Global South.”

Economic inequality and the idea that richer is better were also created by colonization.

To acknowledge that someone’s or a country’s economic status is situational rather than definitive, use terms such as “high-”, “middle-”, or “low-income” to refer to them instead of “rich” or “poor.”

The “Race, Power, and Decolonization” chapter of the Inclusive Language Guide from Oxfam is a good resource to check out for more examples of decolonial writing.

Cross-cultural writing

In any given group of people, people might not all share the same beliefs, political opinions, ways of communicating, or even mother tongue. If you are writing for an international product localized in several languages, these factors become even more important to consider when addressing the user. 

Cross-cultural writing helps ensure that people of all cultures can easily access and understand your product, for example by:

  • Not using cultural references, colloquial language, or idioms that users outside of the culture will not understand. 

  • Using clear, concise, and correct language that can be easily understood by non-mother tongue speakers and the translators that will localize your content.

  • Relying on language and punctuation instead of emoticons to convey meaning or tone – emoticons have different meanings to different people.

Bear in mind that these are just a few examples of cross-cultural writing. Collaborating directly with your designers and translators will enable you to create the right content strategy for your product.

Accessible writing

Making sure that your content is accessible to all disabled, neurodivergent, and aging users in a digital product is vital to ensure they can use it. To do this, you can refer to the four accessibility principles from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines:

  • Perceivable

  • Operable

  • Understandable

  • Robust

Please bear in mind that the descriptions that follow focus on what you as a UX writer can do within your own discipline. There’s a great deal you can accomplish in collaboration with your developers and designers, but this is beyond the scope of this guide.

Perceivable

Some users (whether or not they have a disability) use assistive technology such as a screen reader to navigate your product. Ensuring that your content is perceivable means that a user can still perceive it even if, for example, they are deaf or low vision/blind. You can accomplish this for example by:

  • Adding meaningful alt-text to images, icons, and controls.

  • Captioning and offering transcripts to video content.

  • Using text styles instead of colors for emphasis.

Operable

Some users might need more time to navigate your product and get overwhelmed by content on an interface. To make sure that these users can operate your product, keep your content readable and concise, for example by:

  • Using sequential headings (H1, H2, etc.).

  • Providing clear calls to action and labels on buttons.

  • Removing unnecessary content on visually busy screens.

Your content should essentially be easy to follow when read by a screen reader. Users should also know at all times where they are in the product, how they got there, and where else they can go next. The ISO 24495-1:2023 standard on plain language provides extensive guidelines to produce operable content.

Understandable

Content in an interface should be understandable by everyone, including users who have learning/cognitive disabilities. Structuring your content can support its understandability. You can for example:

  • Use bullet-point lists instead of long sentences.

  • Break down long content into digestible paragraphs.

Limiting the use of jargon, acronyms, and abbreviations can also improve the readability of your content. We recommend plugging your content into the Hemingway Editor and revising until you’ve reached a 7-9th grade reading level.

Robust

Robust content is content that works across all platforms and technologies. You can ensure your content is robust by keeping it as platform- and technology-agnostic as possible. For example, words such as “tap” and “click” imply that the product should be used on a mobile device or on a desktop with a mouse. Replace these words with neutral alternatives such as “select” or “choose” when possible.

Glossary

Assistive technology

Umbrella term referring to devices that help a disabled, ill, or aging individual maintain or improve their functioning and independence. Examples of assistive technology include:

  • Hearing aids

  • Wheelchairs

  • Communication aids

  • Spectacles

  • Prostheses

  • Pill organizers

  • Memory aids

Biased, bias

In the context of machine translation (MT), bias refers to a system’s tendency to make the same assumptions repeatedly. For example, MT systems often default to the masculine when the gender of a person is unknown in the source text.

Culturally appropriative, cultural appropriation

Unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc., of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society. 

Eurocentrism

Worldview that assumes the superiority of European/Western societies over non-Western ones by considering the histories and cultures of non-Western societies from a European/Western perspective.

Gender 

Qualities or ways of behaving which society associates with being male, female, or intersex.

Gender identity

A person's internal sense of being a woman, a man, some combination of a woman and a man, or neither a woman, nor a man.

Heteronormative, heteronormativity

Worldview that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation.

Inaccessible

In the context of digital products, inaccessible means unusable or hardly usable by a disabled person.

Marginalized

Relegated to a marginal position within a society or group.

Microaggressive, microaggression

Commonplace daily verbal, behavioral or environmental slights, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward marginalized groups. 

Pronouns

Third-person identifiers by which an individual chooses to be referred to to indicate their gender identity. For example: 

  • She/her

  • He/him

  • They/them

  • Xe/xir (check out the Guide to Neopronouns from the Human Rights Campaign for a conjugation table of commonly used neopronouns)

Psychologically safe

A psychologically safe team is a team where everyone can speak up, take a risk, or express their ideas or opinions, without risk of punishment or humiliation.

Racialized

Categorized, marginalized, or regarded according to race.

Sex

Biological characteristics that define humans as female, male or a combination of both (intersex).

Resources

A list of the resources linked in this guide.

Intersectionality literature

User research guidelines

Writing guidelines

Tools

Better Standards Club