About
Why inclusive langauge matters
JADE began life as a way to support more inclusive language in job descriptions in the publishing industry, and it has branched out to support more inclusive language across the board.
The type of language used in job descriptions makes a difference in who applies for a job or not. Women are often less likely to apply for higher paid roles, for instance. Likewise, those who are older may shy away from jobs that call for 'a go-getter attitude', or for someone to be 'dynamic'.Why is this tool important?
Exclusionary language in job descriptions can cause people to feel excluded from jobs that they are qualified for. By identifying these questionable pieces of language and suggesting alternatives, JADE supports more inclusive hiring practices.
More recently, JADE has been expanded to support more inclusive language across various industries and contexts. It now flags a much wider array of exclusionary language so it is useful far beyond job descriptions.
What do these categories mean?
The tool flags language across five categories of exclusion:
- Ableist
- Language that assumes a particular physical or cognitive ability, excluding people with disabilities.
- Gendered
- Language that assumes or reinforces binary gender roles, excluding women, non-binary and gender-diverse people.
- Ageist
- Language that discriminates based on age, often excluding older or younger candidates.
- Othering
- Language that positions certain groups as outside the norm, including terms that invoke cultural appropriation or treat minority experiences as exceptional.
- Exclusionary
- Language that creates unnecessary barriers or implies that certain people are less welcome, without falling neatly into the categories above.
How does it work?
JADE uses a natural language dependency parser to search for verbs that are part of the USDL's ableist language lexicon.
The gendered terms come from my work on ableist language lexicon gender in job descriptions in publishing language. Likewise, the ageist terms comes from my research into this.
I've also added in terminology that was not included in the original lexicons, and has been updated to reflect more inclusive language. And I expect to increase the inclusionary coverage over time.
What you need to know
We don't keep your data when you add in a job description. We store the stats such as the number of instances found and the categories they belong to (among other things), but we don't keep any personally identifiable information, or any job descriptions you input.
Who built this?
Dr Miriam J Johnson. I'm an academic of publishing and marketing. I also am a co-founder of a AI-powered startup in the publishing space that makes personalised audiobooks. You can check out Dudley Editions here.
I research a social media and how people interact in online spaces, and I have a particular interest in how language can be used to exclude people in and around the publising industry. I have written about this in the context of job descriptions in publishing, but it is an issue across all industries and contexts. You can find out more about me here.What's next?
We are currently working on expanding the tool's capabilities to include more diverse and inclusive language detection across various industries and contexts. And, we are also planning to develop a way for users to log in to keep up with their submission stats. Again, this will not store your job descriptions but will eventually allow users to run reports and track their progress.
Contact
If you have any questions about JADE, or suggestions for how to make it better, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can contact us via email at hello@booksaresocial.com.