On an inclusive innovation project, you need to communicate in an inclusive way.

Inclusive communication means using language that is free from words, phrases, or tones that reflect prejudiced, stereotyped, or discriminatory views of particular people or groups.

You should think about inclusion when you are talking or writing about things like age, disability, health (including mental health), neurodivergence, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, parenthood, socioeconomic status (including class and poverty), race, religion or belief.

If your organisation doesn’t already have an inclusive style guide, good places to look are charities (like Scope for disability or Mind for mental health) and other specialist charities, or the NHS for anything health-related.

People who belong to a group obviously don’t agree about everything. This includes the language they prefer. No guidance can guarantee that nobody will be unhappy with the way you’ve written about them.

This language changes. It’s okay to not always be right up to date. Do your best, accept correction gracefully, and people should be forgiving.

If you are not sure about something, ask:

• the person or people you are writing about how they would like to be referred to
• specialist organisations

Ask yourself:

• Do you need to mention personal characteristics at all? Only write or ask about these characteristics when they matter for the thing you are working on
• Do the references to people reflect the diversity of that audience?
• Overall, does your writing reflect the experiences of the people you are writing for?
• Is your vocabulary excluding people who may not have specialized knowledge? Writing in clear, plain English without jargon is more inclusive.
• Who are you excluding when you try to be inclusive? Some of the language we use when trying with best intentions to be inclusive is not familiar to everyone in the target audience. This means that sometimes we can accidentally exclude people when we try to be inclusive of everyone.

Inclusivity means more than just including people. It means making people feel actively welcome, that a product or service has been designed with them in mind.