July 21-22, 2021 / Online

Main bedrooms and secondary branches: it’s time to scrub the language of oppression out of our products

Exploring why terminology and vocabulary should evolve
Speakers

Andy Welfle, Candi Williams, Sarah Mohs, Sarah Smart

Throughout the history of language, societies have adjusted vocabulary in little bits, over time. And within the last 50 years, progressives have taken steps to replace words rooted in a history of oppression. Today, we’re seeing big tech companies scrub out terms like “master/slave,” “blacklist,” and “whitelist” from their products. Is this the right course of action? Has PC culture gone too far?

A panel of experienced content designers discuss how they've made progress at their companies in changing this systemic language.

  • Sarah Smart, Content Strategy Manager for Adobe's Creative Cloud
  • Candi Williams, Content Design Lead at Bumble
  • Sarah Vollmer-Mohs, Content Designer at Intuit
  • Moderated by Andy Welfle, co-author "Writing is Designing: Words and the User Experience"

Our sponsoring partners