Diversity: January Professionalism Skills
“We have become not a melting pot, but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”
Jimmy Carter
As I was about to write notes for this particular blog on Diversity, a music video came on my television with the following words on the screen:
What makes us who we are?
Hair? Race? Sex? Eyes?
Reading those words made me think about how large our Earth is with billions of people living in it. No matter how similar we may possibly be, we are all very diverse. We are very different from how we dress, what music we listen to, our beliefs, our cultures, our abilities and our personalities. Even identical twins are not completely the same. According to the article, Do Identical Twins Have Identical Fingerprints? by Pamela Prindle Fierro, twins’ “DNA is virtually indistinguishable”, yet they do not have the same fingerprints.
Web designers must keep Diversity in mind when designing web sites.
When we design web sites, one of the biggest things to consider is the site’s core audience. Who are we designing the site for? What age group? What cultures? What languages do they speak? Do they possibly have any disabilities? How can we accomodate the site’s audience so they will continue visiting the site? We have a vast array of choices to make and things to consider when we design the site. This may take us investing a good amount of our time doing research, but the results will be well worth the expense.
Cultural Diversity and Web Design
Wikipedia states that cultural diversity is “the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole.” It is important to learn how to communicate with different cultures. In the sense of a specific region, if we were to design a web site for an Oklahoma State University organization, we would not want to design the site with the colors crimson and creme, the colors associated with OU. There would be some angry “Cowboy” fans out there. In the sense of the world as a whole, we should consider the cultures that vary from country to country. There are color schemes and pictures that may be appropriate for one culture but offensive to another. As web designers we may not always be limited to working with clients in America. We may have opportunities to work with people living in other countries. Not only is it important to consider diversity for design purposes, but for communicating with clients and understanding them as well. If you were to meet with a client and they do not make eye contact with you, you might would get offended since eye contact usually means interest. However according to the article Eye Contact: What Does it Communicate in Various Cultures, “if a Japanese woman avoids looking someone in the eyes, she is not showing a lack of interest nor is she demonstrating a lack of self-confidence; instead, she is being polite, respectful and appropriate according to her culture.” A good rule of thumb would be to do some homework and learn about the client’s culture before a meeting to prevent any possible misunderstandings.
Diversity and Web Accessibility
Not only is there cultural diversity, but there is diversity among people and their abilities and disabilities. Web accessibility becomes a very important topic when designing web sites. Web accessibility helps ensure that people who have disabilities such as visual, auditory, cognitive and physical, are able to access web sites comfortably. We cannot ignore the fact that many people have these type of disabilities and use the internet regularly just like people who do not have those disabilities. Once again, it is important that we invest additional time in making sure web sites are accessible. When someone that has a disability is able to use a screen reader to navigate a site we designed, it is well worth all our efforts.
Diversity is a beautiful thing. If we were all exactly the same, our world would be such a boring place.
“As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.”
Eugene McCarthy
