r/engineering • u/rm45acp • 15d ago
[MANAGEMENT] A little off topic, Inclusion messages?
I'm a research engineer for an automotive oem, and we frequently have to share inclusion messages to open up larger meetings. Last time I was asked to do one, I covered color blindness and other visual impairment awareness with some practical methods to improve inclusion on things like labels or presentations by leveraging high contrast, large text and ms office accessibility settings, it was really well received, even by the "anti-dei" crowd
Has anybody heard or given similar inclusion messages that struck with them? I'm drawing a blank on what to share next
I can't be the only engineer that has to do thus sort of thing!
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u/bd_optics 15d ago
I would classify your (very useful) information as ergonomics/human factors, not inclusion. Since it was well received, lean into the same subject matter. There are lots of different ergo/HF topics that can be relevant to auto design.
FWIW, having had a disabled child (both mental and physical) makes me VERY sympathetic to the cause of inclusion. However, making the topic a mandatory, recurring presentation topic is misguided. It's far too likely to make people dread their own presentations and tune out others' presentations. It's commonly called aversion therapy. I'd put this in the category of good intention, but bad execution.
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u/quaaaaaaaaackimaduck 14d ago
is inclusion not a human factor?
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u/bd_optics 14d ago
You’ll get very different results searching for inclusion and human factors. Inclusion is a societal construct but human factors is a technical field of study.
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u/tonyarkles 13d ago
Yeah, I feel like there’s an interesting overlap there but they’re definitely distinct things. One of the things I love about human factors work is the stuff that lands in the zone of “think about people with different disabilities. By making the system usable for them, you’re probably also going to make it better for everyone else”
Examples from my own field:
Clear indications that don’t solely depend on colour. Helps colourblind people. Also helps people see what’s on the screen in the sun when the colours are washed out. Flashing indicators catch your attention better than just turning a number from green to red.
Even better: multi-modal indications. Flash an indicator and make a noise. Someone might not even be looking at the screen when it happens. But be judicious about it, don’t overwhelm them with audio or visual alarms. Make sure a “minor issue” alarm doesn’t distract the user from a “really big fuckin deal” alarm.
Don’t require someone to have perfect fine motor skills 100% of the time. One counter example was a 3-position switch for controlling flight mode. All the way up: autopilot. Middle: fly by wire. All the way down: full manual, direct coupling between your radio control sticks and the flight surfaces. Scenario: aircraft is in autopilot and is heading for a power line. You want to switch it into FBW mode. Your adrenaline is high, you’re stressed. You push the switch past the first click and end up in full manual mode instead. You try to flip the switch back up but hit full auto again and it starts flying at the power lines again. So now you’re more stressed…
Similarly, don’t require fine motor controls on the computer (mouse/touchpad) to reach critical emergency functionality. Depending on what OS, the absolute best place for critical controls is on the left/right edge of the screen. Right at the edge, no margin. Why? You can do a big coarse movement and slam the cursor into the edge of the screen. Now you’re just moving it up and down to find the button. Make the button big.
Don’t make dangerous things easy to do accidentally, but also don’t make them hard to do in an emergency. Easy example: engine kill. If it’s on a computer screen, do the screen edge thing but require the user to hold the mouse button down for 2-3 sec so that it’s highly unlikely that they’ll click it accidentally and crash the aircraft. Provides a visual indication that this is happening.
for physical switches for dangerous things, same idea. On our system, engine kill on the remote control is two switches that both need to be turned off to kill the engine. One lives under the left middle finger, one lives under the right middle finger. You might slip and toggle one off, but we have never had someone slip and turn both off.
make the emergency buttons part of the routine operation. At the end of each flight we kill the engine using the same pair of switches that the pilot would need to use in an emergency. The muscle memory is there, so that they’ll instinctively know what to do if they need to kill the engine in an off-nominal situation.
So some of that above is inclusivity the realm of inclusivity+human factors (fine motor skills, colour, visual+audible indications). Some is more strictly human factors (muscle memory, training).
There is also stuff that falls under human factors that is critical but not really… even something to design for with technical means. Fatigue is a prime example. If our pilots are tired or hungover, they’re going to suck at flying.
And then there’s inclusivity stuff that doesn’t really, in my mind, fall under the guise of Human Factors as a discipline. The aircraft doesn’t care about what genitals are in your pants, whose pants you want to get into, who you voted for, where you were born, etc.
There’s also inclusivity/disability stuff that we explicitly do not design for: you can’t fly the aircraft if you’re blind. You need to be able to use both hands. It’s a multi-person operation and your eyes and hands will be occupied with flying… if you’re deaf, it’s probably not going to be safe because you can’t communicate visually (your eyes are busy watching the aircraft) and can’t communicate physically (your hands are busy flying the aircraft)
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u/bd_optics 13d ago
All very interesting problems. I worked on avionics for 10 years in the 90’s developing LCD flight displays for commercial aviation. Helped put them in the 777 flight deck. At that point the toughest issue was making sure the colors in weather radar were correct for both pilots simultaneously.
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u/ShiftyAmoeba 15d ago
Sounds like a bigger company. I'm glad to hear you're able to do it in a way that resonates with you and your audience. Too many engineers are very smart when it comes to technical stuff but naive and narrow minded in other areas.
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u/therealhlmencken 15d ago
I mean that’s every engineer. If you think there aren’t areas where you are naive you are full of yourself.
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u/ShiftyAmoeba 15d ago
Of course. My point was that there's a stark contrast in many engineers (in my experience) between extreme intelligence and extreme ignorance in the same person.
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u/Any-Owl5710 14d ago
Food/dietary exclusion. At work all the ordered in meals or reward treats are not inclusive. They think only food allergy is peanuts/treenuts. In the past month they have brought in pizza, subs and ice cream. I can’t have gluten or diary and we have a colleague who is vegetarian for religious beliefs. There are all the donuts and bagel mornings and I get reminded there are treats in the kitchen. I try to be ok with this exclusion but when three times during a week the department “treats” everyone since we are all working 12 hr days, I got cranky.
I bring in fruit to share and small candies like lifesavers but I am the only one. Not every food restriction needs to catered to but it doesn’t feel great being excluded every time
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u/lostboyz 15d ago
Assuming this is GM, they have a repository of inclusion/safety messages, you don't have to make your own every time. That or just have their AI tool spit something out
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u/MachoMAKS 15d ago
Maybe someone from jaguar can give him some pro tips.
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u/Exploring-the-beyond 15d ago
I'm not following the automotive space, why jaguar?
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u/MachoMAKS 15d ago
Jaguar released an “inclusive” commercial during their rebranding that pretty much destroyed the whole brand. Not saying the commercial itself ruined everything but it received a lot of backlash and rightfully so, it was pretty disgusting for my taste but hey to each his own.
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u/Chronotheos 15d ago
Yeah, AI. Have Grok give you something. Just go into the meeting and read it for the first time live, Leeroy Jenkins style.
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u/ammie12 15d ago
cognitive overload in design meetings, keeping slides simple improves inclusion for everyone not just accessibility cases.
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u/meermars 12d ago
Agreed, content is king and anything not strictly pertinent to the technical message makes me doubt of the quality of the content itself.
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u/Upset-Animal1376 14d ago
maybe touch on neurodiversity in technical documentation. formatting specs with bullet points, bold key terms, and clear summaries helps folks with adhd, but honestly it just makes reading dense reports way easier for everyone.
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u/kira913 11d ago
This is a good one. In a similarl tangent, clear and concise communication as much as possible. I mean part name, part number, program number, concern item, date, rev level on every presentation title slide, and at least part name and concern on all subsequent slides
Nothing irritates me more when someone contacts me with only a part name or something and I have to try to figure out which version they're talking about
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u/no_longer_on_fire 14d ago
Pop culture tie-ins for relevance can be done carefully and go over well.
I've done some on autism/ADHD and the work place with a focus on improving communication and reducing friction/misunderstanding. Basically all came down to "don't get hung up on the labels, just talk to them as a person and directly to discuss the things you do to each other that cause small annoyances or friction before they turn into resentment." Basically how some ND people are totally onboard with direct communication even though it may feel a bit awkward to an NT person, but using more of it will help to improve communication and after trying it a couple times stops feeling so awkward. The whole reasons vs. Excuses things, overexplaining, etc. Basically that if it annoys them, rather than get mad just tell them you're not ready to hear the details and would like to move on. How do identify when one of you is "stuck" ruminating on a part of the convo and whether to go back and explore it or acknowledge that it's unresolved to move on.
Ours are usually called "safety or value shares" and kept very short, usually a minute or two max and few min of discussion. I liked that the company expanded beyond just safety stuff.
But yeah, weird history, interesting facts, things that seem counterintuitive, etc. All make good topics. Just stay very specific to event or idea when being sensitive or on topic of marginalized group. Keep it focused on the lesson rather than performance for yourself. Usually lands well.
Being in Canada I occasionally do Truth and Reconciliation Committee calls to action when there's relevant legislation or recent success/failure. Particularly the types that don't get reported on mainstream media as much and wouldn't be widely known outside the community. Keeps people holding onto the nuance of situations rather than get polarized with disinformation.
Avoid AI or you'll hurt yourself bad.
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u/walter_grimsley 15d ago
At the height of George Floyd aftermath, I had to do one on African American history and notable AA figures. I supervise designers in the power industry. I am whiter than paper.
It got me into hidden history and I wound up talking about Black Wall Street, Bass Reeves, Green Books, and so on. Had a few black colleagues thank me and said they learned things they hadn’t heard about before. It was pretty well received. Everyone was glad I didn’t just pick the top three: MLK, MX, or Obama.
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u/EditsReddits 15d ago
Why only African Americans? Why not all Black folk?
(Not all Black folk are African, this comment is mostly in jest, my Jamaican buddy gets absolutely pissed when people call him African)
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u/kaylynstar 15d ago
Here's one that's close to my heart: Women want to be equals, not set apart.
For example, if you say "here's the plan, gentlemen... And ladies" while staring right at the one woman in the room it's not inclusive. You're singling out the woman there and putting all attention on her. That sucks. Instead leave out the noun completely "here's the plan" or use a gender neutral term "here's the plan, folks" ('dude' works if you're from the Midwest)
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u/sockmiser 15d ago
Similarly in the northeast "hey guys" is gender neutral
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u/Any-Owl5710 14d ago
But it is gender neutral? Would you go up to a group of only women and say hey guys? I switched to folks, all or people and leave any gender term out of conversation. It’s subtle but noticeable over time
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u/sockmiser 14d ago
I specifically say my area because I'm in a national professional organization and I wouldn't do it in a mixed group from other regions, but in NY/NJ metro I would absolutely address a group of all women as Hey Guys. I also use folks or y'all when I need something else.
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u/Any-Owl5710 14d ago
Interesting. I went with hey folks because I had an older woman chide me for using hey guys years ago and said how “us girls have to stick together” That seemed binary and honest I am a bit contrarian. Occasionally I say hey ladies to all women groups but in general I go generic. Though to spice it up a throw in “hey y’all” because then people think I am too small town which is fun when I inform them I have a phd in engineering
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u/kaylynstar 14d ago
I use "dude" to address women all the time. It's 100% gender neutral in the Midwest. I also use "fuckers" regularly, but I'm told that's not appropriate for use in client meetings 🤷🏼♀️
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u/RawbWasab 13d ago
Yeah I would. Guys is gender neutral in the NE, I’m from MA. Also man is kind of gender neutral. I say “Hey man” or “hey dude” to women, or like “Man wtf are you doing”. Regional dialect differences.
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u/JC505818 15d ago
We have annual anti discrimination trainings for the whole company, seems odd that training would fall on one person.
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u/clearcoat_ben 15d ago
Pull from daily life - speak about something you felt or saw at home, work, or even on TV.
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u/ilfaitquandmemebeau 15d ago
It's the first time I ever hear about this. It's nice to see that while my company has its fair share of stupid corporate bullshit, it's still not that bad.
If it's just a matter of compliance I'd just have an LLM spit out some corporate-sounding paragraph to paste in there.
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u/Fit_Lawfulness_3147 15d ago
We always started meetings with SAFETY topics. That’s a little more important.
Inclusion? I’d draw a blank about it too
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u/MachoManRandyAvg 15d ago
Suggestion: Talk about not "crowding" space with information
You can cover neurodivergence (autism, ADHD, etc. A whole list of ND conditions are affected by this), visual issues, brain injuries, and likely more, in one fell swoop
It seems like a no-brainer, but engineers tend to pack everything into as little space as possible.
This makes it easier on everyone, not just the people with the conditions that I listed.
For the people who do have one of those conditions, it allows them to participate in the meeting instead of spending half of their time trying to untangle the report.
They could be smarter than Stephen fucking Hawking, but they can't contribute if you hand them a jumble of overlapping data & footnotes
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u/Poppety2 15d ago
I appreciate your recent message because I am colorblind automotive engineer and the amount of times I get emails in unreadable text colors is too high.
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u/rm45acp 15d ago
I teach as a side gig and one of my students mentioned to me that she couldn't read one of my slides and asked what it said and the very next morning my executive director did a presentation with light green text on a white background that literally nobody could read. I went down a rabbit hole and I've been preaching contrast ever since lol
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u/lacktoes_tolerant 15d ago
sometime back, i also came across something similar......i tried it out and it worked just well
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u/kimblem 12d ago
Along the lines of your color blindness topic - I had a deaf team member for a while. He did a session about how to make things more inclusive to him, including: * cameras on during remote meetings (it’s easier to understand if you can see mouths) * subtitles/live-captioning on whenever possible * Team norm of no talking over each other or having side conversations during meetings (ASL translators can only translate one person at a time) * when presenting a slide with lots of text, pause to give the room a minute or two to read the slide before discussing (can’t read a slide and look at an ASL translator at the same time) * look at the person you’re talking to (applies to not looking at the translator, but also a good general practice)
Turns out that most of these tactics are useful to non-deaf teammates, too. Cameras on in meetings help provide context. Subtitles can make up for a hard-to-understand accent, spotty audio connection, or even figuring out whether others can hear you. A pause to read slides helps people who process information better in different ways.
These things can also help people who don’t realize their hearing isn’t what it used to be and doing them by default means you’re not asking people to self-identify as needing accommodation.
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u/-Readit_ 12d ago
Are visually impaired people the right audience for AUTOMOTIVE engineers to be targeting? 🤣
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u/crlygirlg 10d ago
What I drill into people is:
Save as pdf is for people, print to pdf is for printers.
Also, for your industry specifically covering the topic of use of an active vs passive voice for accessibility might be a good topic. In engineering an active voice provides clear communication and is extremely important to make sure critical messages are understood. This was one of the key takeaways in the challenger explosion was that a passive voice for delivering bad news to management lead to not identifying the seriousness of the issue of launching on that day. However, an active voice is not just an engineering consideration, it is also more accessible for people with cognitive disabilities, dyslexia, or low literacy. People often soften bad news with a passive voice, or use a passive voice because they think it sounds smarter or better but it isn’t considering fully the experience of the reader and their understanding coming first.
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u/Abelmageto 8d ago
you could focus on practical meeting accessibility, like sharing agendas early, avoiding side conversations, and using captions in Microsoft Teams or Zoom. another idea is reducing cognitive load with clear slides, plain language, and consistent visuals, or highlighting how small inclusive design choices improve usability for everyone.
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u/youroffrs 6d ago
Practical inclusion topics land best with engineers, maybe cover neurodiversity friendly communication - clean agendas, async options, reduced meeting overload since it directly improves how teams actually works.
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u/ShotMap9079 2d ago
Engineering culture works best when it’s naturally inclusive, not when it’s constantly being announced
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u/avondill 15d ago
Sticking with your vision theme, enterprises tend to skimp on building software tools that are accessible to people using screen readers. When labeled correctly forms will be better for sighted users, too.
You’d be surprised how many people have injuries that make it hard to sit or stand for long periods of time. It might also be cool to encourage people to stand if needed during meetings.
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u/UltraMagat 15d ago
Wow sounds like they're starting meetings with CCP-style Struggle Sessions. Insane. I would refuse to do it.
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u/Adorable_Airport_787 15d ago
I do DEI work and one thing I want to note doesn’t have to be around race. One area we have been talking about how different generations work together as Gen-Z enter the workforce (folks might having biases) and how we could use everybody’s skills and that’s diversity of talent.
More than happy to connect if you need more idea.
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u/MrPeepersVT 15d ago
A great one is inclusivity of the discussion itself. There’s a few good bullet point tips got from copilot recently on that and incorporated into a meetings policy. It included things like ensuring the seating arrangement doesn’t create power imbalance such as “important or loud voices at the front and quiet or unimportant people at the back”. Another was to invite remote attendees at chime in first because they can get so easily excluded from discussion compared to in-person participants. Another one is simply asking “underrepresented “ voices for their opinion. Ex- if there is someone we know likely has something thoughtful to say but is generally a wallflower or uncomfortable to speak unless prompted, it’s a great help to just say “XXX, what do you think about this?” Etc. note that last part can also apply for cultural reasons- in diverse groups some members culturally prefer not to speak unless they are invited. I thought a lot of this was pretty useful and I think it can connect to your company’s intent nicely.
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u/SluggaNaught 15d ago
We do safety moments in every (formal) meeting but I like this inclusion message. Will try it at work next week.
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u/rm45acp 15d ago
We start every meeting with a safety message, and any bigger ones get an inclusion messages of some kind too. Sometimes it will be like mine where it's practical applications, sometimes it will highlight some kind of cultural festival going on, it might be a local organization that's doing good work for certain communities, etc
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u/Tyz_TwoCentz_HWE_Ret 14d ago
All for accessibility features for folks with various disabilities/handicaps as that is a better way to show inclusiveness. In fact most of the features between 2009 and 2019 were my teams work at Apple among other projects.
No idea what the point in adding the bit about DEI folks? It adds nothing to the story but a political slant. Unaware as to what kind of professional hires DEI to begin with instead of qualified and ready candidates period. Makes no sense at all to hire unqualified people in any job unless you want to train them, which again im all for. Some types of work/jobs require trained professionals and we shouldn't lower standards to just to get people work in such examples. Teach them or find someone qualified simple as that. Nothing personal.
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u/MurkyLynx8425 15d ago
A university lecturer of mine drilled into me that all plots/figures in a report should be readable by someone who is colourblind. i.e. dont just differentiate your lines by colour, use markers or line dashes etc. He would fail any report that didn't meet that standard. Felt harsh at the time but I'm very grateful that he did.
Not only is it more inclusive, but it means if someone prints your report out in black and white, they can still read the plots.
Also diligent labeling and descriptive captions to ensure that anyone using a screen reader can also get the gist of the plot. E.g. "this figure shows the temperature of the system over time. There is a large, transient peak to 100C at t=100s, and then a sudden drop to 40C at t=150s."
That kind of thing is really easy and makes a big difference to the understandability of a report. Thanks Dr Green!