In class, we had the in class activity about inclusive and insensitive writing. This assignment was able to open our eyes on vocabulary choices that we didn’t even notice as being potentially harmful to others that might be reading our work. This got me thinking about if anyone else has been using the Alex JS linter and if they have posted anything about their feedback and experience while using it. From my searching I found a blog post called, “Refactoring condescending language with alexjs” by Suzanne Aitchison. This blog focused on their experience with the Alex JS linting tool and what led them to start thinking about their use of words and tone when writing their work.
The blog started with what got them thinking about their use of tone and content when writing . They mentioned how they were told to focus on words such as “easy” and “simply” because to some people the task at hand might not be so simple or easy to them which can be very discouraging and have them lose motivation. The Alex JS linter focuses on, “gender favoring, polarizing, race related, religion inconsiderate, or other unequal phrasing in text” which covers most of the types of insensitive ways of writing. In the author’s experience when they used it on their own work they had 104 warning of insensitive writing that all fell into common groups. Which happened to be the use of “easily”, “simply” and “just” which we now know is insensitive to people who may not find certain tasks easy. In addition, they also ran into one of the negatives of the linter which is false positives. In this case, it was flagging words like “color” and “special” which fall under the list of insensitive language however in this context it was not. Their takeaway from working with Alex was that their default way of writing will need some work that can be taken as insensitive and Alex is a tool that helps them in making their work more inclusive.
After reading Suzanne Aitchison’s blog, I found the reading very helpful because it further pushed me in the right direction of working with more inclusive language as well as pointing out things that I did not catch when we were working on our exclusivity activity in class. I feel like as we progress as a society and we are working on becoming more inclusive tools like Alex JS will be very helpful. When we first started the in class activity I didn’t see a problem with some of the flagged words however after seeing why they were being flagged as well as reading the blog I am increasingly understanding how certain words can be taken from those that come from other backgrounds than I do. My main takeaway from this will be working on using more inclusive language and making sure that my work can be taken in a positive note from whoever reads it.
https://dev.to/s_aitchison/refactoring-condescending-language-with-alexjs-3ifp
Giovanni Casiano - Software Development 