Inclusive code language by default at Parakey

We welcome the autumn with another news from the summer. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, several tech actors began questioning the level of racism and exclusion in common names in the industry.

The industry is, of course, aware that racism will not be magically combated by changing the choice of words, but we at Parakey want to be involved in breaking a pattern that helps to make exclusion so ingrained in our society that we hardly notice it. This also applies to gender impairments in any form.

During the summer we introduced guidelines for inclusive code language. We write both code and documentation such as user stories with inclusion and diversification in mind. Some examples:

• We use as much as possible gender-neutral words like "they" instead of "he" or "she", "human race" instead of "mankind" and "police officer" instead of "policeman".
  
  
• We do not use terms derived from the notion that "black" is bad and "white" is good. For example, we use "denylist/allowlist" instead of "blacklist/whitelist".
  
  
• We also don't use temer as "master" or "slave", which has long been common to describe the relationship between servers or which version of software is active. Instead, we have chosen to use "main" and "develop".
  
  
• In descriptions of people, we avoid phrases that suggest victimhood. We avoid terms such as "disabled", "blind", "deaf" and "normal" and instead focus on the person by using "person with/without disability", "person with/without impaired vision/hearing".
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As I said, we do not believe that we or the industry as a whole will solve structural problems and challenges in society overnight. One thing we are convinced of, however: if we can think and reason about things we do on a daily basis in a more inclusive way, we have come a long way towards a society where everyone can feel welcome.

Do you think like us and want to be involved in building products for the future? See what kind of vacancies we have 👇