Dries Buytaert

Last week, Nikki Stevens presented "Other, Please Specify" for TEDx at Arizona State University. In her TED Talk, Nikki shares the story behind the Open Demographics Initiative, which is developing a recommended set of questions that anyone can use to ask online community members about their demographics.

Nikki demonstrates how a majority of demographic surveys require users to conform to restrictive identity fields, which can alienate minority or underrepresented groups. The Open Demographics Initiative wants to develop forms that are more inclusive, in addition to giving people more control over the data and information they chose to disclose.

Inspired by Nikki's presentation, I reached out to the engineering team at the Drupal Association to see if there are plans to implement the Open Demographics Initiative's recommendations on Drupal.org. I was happy to learn that they are collaborating with the Open Demographics team to add the recommendations to the user registration process on Drupal.org.

Adopting Open Demographics on Drupal.org will also allow us to improve reporting on diversity and inclusion, which in turn will help us better support initiatives that advance diversity and inclusion. Plus, we can lead by example and inspire other organizations to do the same.

Thank you Nikki, for sharing the story behind the Open Demographics Initiative, and for helping to inspire change in the Drupal community and beyond.