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Pronouns and Name Pronunciation in Profiles
Overview
Slack's help center documents that admins can display or hide people's pronouns and name pronunciation in profiles, enabling organizations to support these identity and respect cues at scale. A separate profile help page lists Pronouns and Name pronunciation as editable attributes. Benefit: lower social friction for trans and nonbinary people and anyone whose name is frequently mispronounced. Lesson: inclusivity improves when the system makes it easy to be correct.
Why it matters
Misgendering and persistent mispronunciation are not small mistakes in aggregate; they signal exclusion and can reduce psychological safety at work. Coverage of the rollout emphasized name pronunciations via phonetics or audio recordings to reduce repeated correction burden. The benefit is faster trust formation on distributed teams. Call to action: treat identity-respect features as onboarding defaults with user control and admin governance to prevent forced disclosure.
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Take action
- Names – GOV.UK Design System - https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/names/
- Name - https://designsystem.digital.gov/patterns/create-a-user-profile/name/
- Inclusive UX writing - Spectrum - https://spectrum.adobe.com/page/inclusive-ux-writing/
- Microsoft Inclusive Design - https://inclusive.microsoft.design/
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