Perspectives on inclusive content creation: Challenging our unconscious biases

In its simplest form, being inclusive is about ‘not excluding any particular groups of people’ [1], but in content creation, we have the opportunity to go beyond this dictionary definition. At Hopscotch, we think it’s our responsibility to make sure all learners feel actively included and represented to ensure everyone can access and benefit from the education content we’re producing.

We’re always challenging ourselves to think about what more we could do to make sure we engage a range of learners. So, we’ve spoken to a range of experts to find out more about how they create inclusive and accessible content. In the second blog in this series, we reached out to The Hobbs Consultancy, which specialise in supporting the development of inclusive workplace cultures. Their founder Roxanne highlights how important it is to challenge our unconscious biases as content creators and the responsibility we have to move the narrative forward.

We all have unconscious bias. It is the downside to the very useful human trait of being able to categorise information. As a result of this ability, we often create stereotypes – think of it as an inefficient categorisation in which we put people in boxes based on what we’ve seen or heard in the past.

Unconscious bias happens when we ‘fill in the gaps’ in our awareness using these stereotypes, often to the detriment of others.

Close your eyes and imagine you’re sitting on a hospital bed talking to the surgeon about your upcoming operation and the nurse about your recovery afterwards. Chances are that you will have thought about a male surgeon and a female nurse. We didn’t know the gender of these professionals but have filled in the gaps (potentially incorrectly) based on what we’ve seen or heard in the past.

Why is it important for content creators to be aware of this? Well, our biases and stereotypes are literally a result of everything that we’ve seen around us. If we constantly see images in the news, in picture books, in training programmes of male surgeons and female nurses, our brains start to make up the story that all surgeons are male and all nurses are female.

Double check all of the images that you are using and ask yourself, ‘Do these perpetuate existing stereotypes?’. Are we representing different groups of people in our content and in way that is integrated to the message, rather than as bolt ons? Is the language that we are using also free from bias and stereotype?

As creators of content, we have the opportunity to literally shift how people see the world. Use that privilege wisely.

Roxanne Hobbs, The Hobbs Consultancy

[1] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/inclusive