Diversity groups is much more than just a people joining in to feel welcome or welcoming others. It’s about welcome people who themselves would struggle to speak up if they are in a minority, wanting to discuss things others experience, working with others to offer guidance on best practices if possible, encouraging people
People who would come to these things want to help out the project as they believe in it, but if it does not have a community for them to feel welcome in it becomes less likely for them to want to participate
Prior to this initiative there has been the Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee (DISC) Working Group but that was under the Foundation and ultimately got paused. But I wanted it to grow organically and with as little paperwork as possible while also helping people out with various things.
Personally for myself, I saw that there weren’t any spaces where people could come together to work on issues. Teaching people who want to be inclusive on how to do so. And generally just helping other people out who also feel like they don’t have a community they can belong to
We want to highlight things such as accessibility features within cities, helping out events and organisers to showcase what we can do to improve the data for accessibility around their events, or generally just offering feedback on what different groups would want
Some of us will be queer, some of us will have reduced mobility, vision, hearing, or general bodily function. Some of us have mental health problems which means they might need information where they can go for reduced noise environments, less visual noise such as bright lights, or good restaurants nearby that matches their needs
There is a huge variety of people in the world that all need or want things, big and small, that would improve their quality of life. Very few changes reduce the experience for others
On the web there is also a different kind of problem relating to accessibility, which is also something I hope we can tackle at some point for various projects within and around OpenStreetMap. People who use screen readers, have reduced vision, or even epilepsy are all things one has to consider to make things more accessible
I do not mean to force people to feel welcome or to join just to feel welcome even though they don’t want to do anything for OpenStreetMap, there are plenty of communities around that are generic. We are for OpenStreetMap and want to foster a community around that. People within OpenStreetMap are friendly, but some are also unfriendly. Some may struggle to speak up for themselves, or even wonder if others have the same issue. If people do not want to contribute, that is fine, but please do not dismiss or discourage the project due to it
