DEI and Accessibility in Action: Share with us your examples of actions you have undertaken towards the realisation of accessibility, diversity, equity and inclusion in The Carpentries community

[OscarSiba]

Background/Context

The Carpentries is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. This is a commitment we have reinforced in recent times, and again, and again.

The Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion episode in The Carpentries Instructor Training curriculum defines these key terms using the University of Pittsburgh’s DEI Glossary.

However, The Carpentries maintains its own Community Glossary of Terms, in which the definitions of “accessibility,” “diversity,” and “equity” are provided. The definitions in The Carpentries Glossary differ slightly from the definitions in the University of Pittsburgh’s DEI Glossary.

Following a discussion with some community members on how best to harmonise this difference, The Carpentries Community Engagement Team recommends that:

• We retain the definitions in The Carpentries Glossary of Terms as they are.
• The Instructor Training Curriculum Maintainers (and, if need be, the Trainers Leadership Committee) approve changes to the Instructor Training curriculum to reflect the definitions in The Carpentries Glossary of Terms.
• With contributions from the broader Carpentries community, The Carpentries Community Engagement Team adds short descriptions of the actions undertaken in The Carpentries community towards the realisation of accessibility, diversity, and equity within our community.

We make these recommendations because the definitions in The Carpentries Glossary of Terms closely align with the educational mission of The Carpentries, while also remaining general enough. This allows for their broader re-use across other Carpentries-adjacent communities that might want to adopt our definitions for their contexts.

What do we need from you?
We are calling on the broader Carpentries community to share with us examples of actions you have undertaken as a member of The Carpentries community towards the progressive realisation of accessibility, diversity, equity and inclusion in our community.

You can share examples in the form of stories, blog posts, photos, examples of projects, teaching methods, any other artefacts, etc.

We will select some of these examples for inclusion in The Carpentries Glossary of Terms, to accompany its definitions of the following terms:

• Accessibility:
  design of products, devices, services, or environments to be usable by all people regardless of their abilities; sometimes abbreviated as “a11y”, where 11 stands for the number of letters between the first “a” and the last “y” in the word accessibility.

• Diversity:
  individual differences (e.g., personality, language, learning preferences and life experiences) and group-social differences (e.g., race, ethnicity, class, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual identity, country of origin and ability status, as well as cultural, political, religious or other affiliations) that can be engaged in the service of learning.

• Equity:
  creation of opportunities for access to and participation in programs that are capable of closing participation gaps in our community.

• Inclusion:
  active, intentional, and ongoing engagement of diverse people and communities that increases awareness, content knowledge, and empathic understanding of the ways we interact within (and change) our community.

Please add your example/s of actions as a comment to this issue, indicating which term your action reflects.

The Community Engagement Team will then collate the best illustrative actions for each term, and make further recommendations to the Instructor Training Curriculum Maintainers and Trainers Leadership Committee that the collated illustrative examples be added to the definitions in our Community Glossary of Terms.

Deadline
We will be accepting examples throughout 2025, and evaluating and collating the submissions at the end of each quarter.

Thank you!