Codify inclusive meeting standards in the Code of Conduct

[jenstrickland]

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)

My suggestion is to codify inclusive meeting standards in the Code of Conduct, such as:

• Do not interrupt others who are speaking.
• Design working sessions that do not require participants to watch the chat, Zoom meeting, IRC, read documents, and try to write in them while being spoken to.
• Ask clarifying questions when someone seems to make no sense to you.
• Ensure captions and live transcripts are available for all meetings.

TL;DR

To begin with, I trust that everyone working within the W3C seeks to respect the human dignity of others they collaborate with and that any "hiccups" are unintentional.

Despite the best of intentions, people can't know what they don't know, and things happen. Yet the impact on those affected have a ripple effect beyond that moment, often making people sick for weeks, requiring taking time off of work, canceling social commitments, and medical interventions.

We are now more aware of neurodiversity, cultural differences, cognitive considerations, and trauma-informed best practices, yet have we institutionalized these lessons identified into lessons learned and adopted?

As an example, we can make it a code of conduct required behavior not to interrupt people, as it is a known issue for all of the above listed states. There is a difference between conversational flow and interruptions. The difficulty may be in clarifying that for the understanding of all.

Another example is to ensure that both captions and a live transcript are available for all meetings.

Other considerations might be to ensure that design of working sessions consider that some people have intersectional hearing, vision, and cognitive considerations and that trying to watch the chat, Zoom meeting, IRC, read documents, and try to write in them while being spoken to is an unreasonable ask. This is a scenario that multiple people in the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group have raised with me, yet the leadership was unwilling to address due to the time pressures they are dealing with at present.

As the Positive Work Environment group, there are people who are currently being negatively impacted by inhospitable meeting conditions that chairs and W3C staff may not be aware of. Many of those who reached out to me expressed reticence to speak with the leadership worried about retaliation. While we have worked hard to make the ombuds program usable, it's still not well-known and it has some usability hiccups (issue tickets to come), so that is a time-consuming process to try to use at present.

[TzviyaSiegman]

Consider adding something like "Prioritize the most vulnerable people. Recognize that there are people with disabilities in your group whether or not they have been disclosed to you. We are a global population serving people from multiple regions with different backgrounds.

[VirginiaBalseiro]

I strongly support explicitly including interruptions in the Code of Conduct. From my personal experience, speaking different languages has shown me how certain language structures (e.g., verb placement) can lead to more or fewer interruptions, so this might be worth taking into account too. Aside from language differences, I have also frequently been interrupted by male peers who dominate conversations with the loudest voices. It is especially damaging when chairs and other people in positions of leadership engage in this type of behavior. Over time, this has not only made it difficult for me to contribute fully and do my job effectively, but has also taken a toll on my mental health. Addressing interruptions explicitly would help mitigate these systemic issues and create a more inclusive environment.

[dbooth-boston]

I agree with the above sentiments, but as discussed in our last meeting, expectations around interruption are highly culturally dependent, and not always harmful, such as with active listening or so-called "cooperative overlap", so it is hard to formulate appropriate hard-and-fast rules.

The Code currently addresses interruptions mostly in section 3.1 (Expected Behavior) point 7:

Be aware of how much time is taken up by dominant members of the group. If you find yourself dominating a discussion, it is especially important to step back and encourage other voices to join in.

And in section 3.2 (Unacceptable Behavior) point 14:

Sustained disruption of discussion. This may include, but is not limited to, various common methods of engaging in bad faith discourse such as:

. . .
Repeatedly interrupting or talking over someone else.

That wording puts interrupting under "bad faith discourse", which I think is not quite correct, since most of the time it is not done in bad faith. I think one minor improvement we could make would be to change the wording above to move the "Repeatedly interrupting or talking over someone else" bullet to the top of the list, and add "domineering or" to the list's introduction:

Sustained disruption of discussion. This may include, but is not limited to, various common methods of engaging in domineering or bad faith discourse such as:

I do not think this would be a significant enough change to require immediate re-approval by the AB, but it's good to collect minor improvements for whenever we do the next major update.

[jenstrickland]

There are differences between conversational flow and interruption.

In some groups it demonstrates who has power and who is being kept down.

It is also harmful for many with disabilities. Try attending a meeting using only a screen reader, captions, or live transcript. As I've described before, the crosstalk of people talking over each other is physically painful and exhausting.

To participate in discussion, how can we support inclusion?