Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Resource Guide

Table of Contents

Language Related DEI Resources

General Resources for Inclusive Language:

• The American Psychological Association (APA) promotes using language that is free of bias in order to talk about all people with inclusivity and respect. They note that writers using APA Style should use this guide to avoid prejudicial beliefs or demeaning attitudes in their writing.
• The APA Bias Free Language Guide has both general guidelines for writing about people without bias across a range of topics and specific guidelines that address the individual characteristics of age, disability, gender, participation in research, racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. It also has examples for each of these. These guidelines and recommendations were crafted by panels of experts on APA’s bias-free language committees.
• The APA Inclusive Language Guide updated in 2023 is written to raise awareness, direct learning, and support the use of culturally sensitive terms and phrases that center the voices and perspectives of those who have been historically marginalized or stereotyped. The guide also explains the origins of problematic terms and phrases and offers suitable, more contemporary alternatives. Download the pdf version.

• Marketing Partners is a marketing, communication firm that works with many nonprofits and government agencies. As part of the Resources for Change they provide a Guide to Inclusive Language.
• This guide includes the background on inclusive language, why inclusive language matters, principles for reducing implicit bias, with a glossary and guidelines and examples by topic.

Resources for Specific Topics in Inclusive Language:

• The Americans with Disabilities Act National Network provides information, guidance and training on how to implement the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in order to support the mission of the ADA to “assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities.”
• They provide Guidelines for Writing About People With Disabilities which includes sample language and examples and can be downloaded.

• The National Center on Disability and Journalism is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. They note that people with disabilities comprise at least 19% of the U.S. population or about 54.4 million people. They provide support for journalists and writers as they cover people with disabilities.
• The Disability Language Style Guide covers almost 200 words and terms commonly used when referring to disability, most of which are not covered in The Associated Press style guide. It also has Spanish, Italian, and Romanian translations of the guide and is downloadable.

• The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) advocates on behalf of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in newsrooms on the front lines for stronger representation and more inclusion. We are proud to stand on the shoulders of our fearless founders.
• This Style Guide is meant for anyone who wants to better understand and more responsibly cover Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. They hope that this guide can bring more nuance, accuracy and accountability to coverage of the AAPI population, which is made up of about 50 ethnic groups that speak more than 100 languages. The guide provides searches for both categories and terms with explanations and suggestions.

• The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) works to strengthen ties among Black journalists, student journalists, journalism educators and media professionals and sensitize all media to the importance of fairness in the workplace for Black journalists.
• The NABJ style guide is compiled from a variety of resources and is updated annually. Guidance is provided alphabetically. It also provides links to many other style books.

• The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) is an educational and charitable association dedicated to the recognition and professional advancement of Hispanic students, professionals, and educators in the field of journalism.
• The Cultural Competence Handbook is designed to help communicate with and about diverse collectives, recognizing the differences or variety in people’s identities or experiences –– ethnicity, race, national origin, language, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, immigration status, etc.
• The handbooks covers migration, immigration, victims of violence and crime reporting, LGBTQ community, sexism, and medical reporting. They also provide Guidelines for Reporting on Immigration Raids.

• The Indigenous Journalists Association’s mission is centered on the idea that accurate and contextual reporting about Indigenous people and communities is necessary to overcome biases and stereotypes portrayed in popular and mainstream media.
• They provide Reporting Guidelines on topics such as the Indigenous Media Guides, Indian Child Welfare Act, Violence Against Women Act, and Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

• The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) provide a reference guide for media and other writers who want to tell LGBTQ people's stories fairly and accurately.
• They provide a Glossary of Terms: LGBTQ but note that it is not intended to be an allinclusive glossary of language used within the LGBTQ community, nor is it a prescriptive guide for LGBTQ people and encourage writers to ask people how they describe themselves.

• Indiana University Bloomington provides a Style Guide on the Singular Pronoun “They” & Gender-Inclusive Academic Writing.
• This style guide discusses guidelines for all 3 major academic style guides (APA, Chicago Manual of Style, and MLA) and how to achieve gender neutral writing.

• The Religion Newswriters Foundation (RNF) is a secular educational and charitable 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization housed at the University of Missouri’s Columbia campus, in its top-flight School of Journalism. It advances religious literacy through its websites, resources, networks, training seminars, events and other programs tailor-made for media professionals, corporate clients and the general public. The Foundation facilitates and encourages discourse about religion in a neutral and informative way without endorsing or promoting any particular belief system or point of view.
• The RNF Stylebook includes entries on the major religions, denominations and religious organizations journalists often encounter, terms used in stories on current topics in the news, such as abortion and homosexuality, and religion terms that are not included in The Associated Press Stylebook can be browsed by terms or categories.

Diverse Images Resources

Illustrations:

• Mix-&-match illustrations of people with a design library. You can create your own remix. Change the hairdos, tops, and pants. You can also Design the humaaan body. Rotate and position the elements in your humaaans however you like. They're like legos made out of flesh... and vectors.
• CC0 Free for commercial or personal use by Pablo Stanley.

Individuals with disabilities:

• Disabled And Here is a reclaiming of our depiction, starring disabled BIPOC with different diagnoses (or lack thereof), body sizes/types, sexual orientations, and gender identities. This is disability representation from our own community.
• The Disability and Here Collection is a disability-led effort to provide free & inclusive stock images from our own perspective, with photos and illustrations celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC). You can browse by categories and tags.

• Disability:IN is a leading nonprofit resource for business disability inclusion worldwide. It partners with leading companies and drives progress through initiatives, tools, and expertise that deliver long-term business impact.
• They offer disability inclusive stock photography to the public in an effort to empower business to achieve disability inclusion and equality. They also have disability inclusive illustrations.

• 1 in 5 people in the world live with a disability, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find lots of images to represent this. However, that's not always the case. Because beauty belongs to everyone, Disability Is Beautiful provides an exhaustive library of art provided by the disability community.
• The Disability is Beautiful Collections include photos in a wide variety of categories. The Disability Is Beautiful License allows you to download and use photos on Disability Is Beautiful for either personal or commercial purposes for free.

• Getty has launched a new subcategory on Getty Images: the Disability Collection. The collection aims to show that people with disabilities live full lives, they are not imprisoned by the disability they have, they work, spend time with friends, laugh, play and enjoy life.
• Getty worked with the NDLA (National Disability Leadership Alliance) and global media and technology company Oath, to repicture disability stereotypes with a collection of over 1600 images.

• Pexels is a free stock photo and video website and app that helps designers, bloggers, and everyone who is looking for visuals to find great photos and videos that can be downloaded and used for free. If you see a photo or video you like, simply download it for free (no strings attached!).
• The Free Disability Photos cover a wide array of people and disabilities.

Images of Diverse People:

• The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés. This collection aims to help media better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities—people with careers, relationships, talents, passions, and home lives.
• Per the terms of the Creative Commons license, you may not create derivative work from the images or use the images for commercial purposes.

• Women of color in tech provides women of color and non-binary people of color a safe space to connect and discuss issues in the tech industry that are important to them.
• This collection contains stock photos of women of color in tech, now free to use.The #WOCinTech photos are available under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license. This means that you may copy, distribute, and display the images as long as you attribute #WOCinTech Chat. Otherwise, you are free to use them as you wish.

• Developed in response to the lack of authentic stock photography that featured melanated women… “black women“.. they chose to create this platform – for us, by us.
• The platform contains authentic stock images featuring melanated women (has some free images)

• Nappy collections contain beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people to startups, brands, agencies, and everyone else. Nappy makes it easy for companies to be purposeful about representation in their designs, presentations, and advertisements.
• Images are available under the Creative Commons Zero (CCO) so you can download these photos, modify them, share them, distribute them, or use them for whatever you want for free.

• Free stock images of our diverse community at work.
• These photos are available to be used as long as you include a visible attribute to Jopewell.com or Jopwell.

• There is a large scale of underrepresentation of South Asians – affectionately known as Desi people – across stock photography sources online. What’s more, the Desi images that do exist are heavily stereotyped and tend to represent an entirely outdated view of this community.
• That’s why they have launched ‘Despora’ – a collection of free-to-download images of Desi people, which represents this community as it is: modern, diverse and breaking down barriers and boundaries. Free images under Creative Commons License

• They've created the first free library showing positive and realistic images of over 50s in a bid to challenge negative and stereotypical views of older age. The photos show a more realistic depiction of ageing – to help tackle ageism and challenge the idea that all older people are frail and vulnerable. The library, which contains over 3,000 images and is regularly updated, offers journalists, organisations and individuals a wide selection of images.
• Photos in the library are free for use across your presentations and websites, and they cover themes related to ageing such as health, homes and employment. You can access a preview of our image library below. You can also download their simple guide to using the image library and guidance around commissioning age-positive images.

• As a technology company focused on serving plus-size people, they created this collection to meet their own needs for their company Instagram account. They needed photos of plussize people doing normal things and existing stock photo sites either didn’t have images they liked or the costs were prohibitively high. But before they took the first photo for this project, they knew they were going to publish the images for free. At AllGo, they’re committed to doing everything they can to increase the representation of plus-size people.
• These photos are available for all uses and feature plus-size people. While attribution is not required to use the photos, they do ask that you please credit AllGo and photographer Michael Poley of Poley Creative whenever possible so that others may find their stock photo collections.

DEI Disciplinary Content Resources

Organizations that Promote Diversity in their Field

Publishers and DEI Resources

Industry/ Textbooks:

• Macmillan Learning looks to boldly lead in education- by driving innovation through inclusive design (Products), by creating a workforce reflective of our diverse communities of learners (People), and by cultivating a culture of belonging where all are valued (Culture).
• They provide an Educators’ Guide To Creating Inclusive Environments and Fostering Equitable Opportunities

• Within McGraw Hill, we foster a culture of belonging, and we work with partners who share our commitment to equity, inclusion, and diversity in all forms. Their commitment to education for all
  
• McGraw Hill provides author support including information on Guidelines for Proposals.
• McGraw Hill We believes in unlocking the potential of every learner at every stage of life. To accomplish that, we are dedicated to creating products that reflect, and are accessible to, all the diverse, global customers we serve. They provide an outline of inclusive content guidelines.

• To achieve OpenStax’s mission of improving educational access and learning for everyone, we understand it is our responsibility to serve diverse learners1 equitably and inclusively. To do so, OpenStax as an organization must itself be diverse, equitable, and inclusive so that we may provide the most productive, creative, and effective environment for achieving this mission. Our goal is to achieve equitable outcomes for all OpenStax users and all of our employees.

• Oxford University Press (OUP) Publishing with purpose. Their mission shapes everything they do: They further the University of Oxford’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.
• OUP’s Responsible Publishing Report showcases their ongoing commitment to environmental sustainability, operating ethically, and supporting the communities they work with, aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Publishers Compact.

Academic Publishing:

• The Royal Society of Chemistry brought together 56 publishing organizations to set a new standard to ensure a more inclusive and diverse culture within scholarly publishing. They acknowledge that biases exist in scholarly publishing and are committed to scrutinizing their own processes to minimize these.
• They include a list of minimum standards for scholarly publishing.

• Wiley states that diversity, equity, and inclusion are absolutely central to the success of research and its dissemination. They note that a lack of diversity will limit the potential of research and will limit the potential of educating the world through science.
• They are involved with the Joint Commitment for Action on Inclusion and Diversity in Publishing.
• They provide a self-administered check list for increasing diversity, equity and inclusion in your journal.

Inclusive Tools

Gender:

• Women are cited less often than men in both academic and textbook publishing (e.g. Becker and Nelson 2021). It can be challenging to assess the gender-balance of your citations and examples.
• A free Gender Balance Assessment Tool has been developed to automate the process of evaluating the (probabilistic) gender of each name and then providing an estimate of what percentage of the authors on a syllabus are women. You can copy or upload a .txt or .bib file of your text or bibliography. They note that gender prediction is based on given names. Citations without given names (or with only initials) will either produce no estimate or a wildly inaccurate one. The algorithm predicts the gender most commonly associated with the name which may not be the true gender of the author. There is more information about the prediction algorithms on the site.
• Although the site has changed since it was published, for more information about the underlying logic of the tool, please see:
• Sumner, Jane Lawrence. 'The Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT): a webbased tool for estimating gender balance in syllabi and bibliographies.' PS: Political Science & Politics 51, no. 2 (2018): 396-400.

• Created at Utah State University, WebAIM’s mission: “expanding the potential of the web for people with disabilities by empowering individuals and organizations to create accessible content”.
• Contrast and color use are vital to accessibility. Users, including users with visual disabilities, must be able to perceive content on the page. WebAIM’s Contrast Checker provides guidance on color contrast for accessibility particularly for websites adhering to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Color contrast considerations are also applicable to print texts.

Diversity and Inclusion in Textbooks References