A presentation given by Adrienne Moherek, Developer Experience Technical Leader, Cisco, at our 2024 Austin API Summit, March 12-13. Session Description: Heard of suss? You can suss out more information or you can find someone’s information to be suss. “Suss” shows the flexibility of language. It’s an ongoing process to change how we use certain words. It’s important to choose words carefully to convey the correct meaning and avoid harmful subtext or exclusion. Let’s explore some of the tools and triage methods that it takes from an engineering viewpoint to make bias-free choices. How can you ensure that biased words do not sneak into code, UI, docs, configurations, or our everyday language? First, let’s walk through how to take an inventory of assets from code to config files to API specifications to standards. Next, by placing those findings into categories, prioritize the work to substitute with inclusive alternatives. Let’s examine some examples using both API and code assets. Next is a demonstration of how to automate analyzing your source code or documentation with a linter, looking for patterns based on rules that are fed into the tool. What’s in the future for these efforts? Inclusive language should expand beyond English and North America efforts. To do so, let’s organize the work with automation tooling, as engineers do.

1. Adrienne Moherek, Developer Experience Technical Leader, Cisco
Austin API Summit
March 13, 2024
Bias-Free Language in Code and Configurations
Inclusive, Accessible Tech:

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
The presentation today will touch
on sensitive topics, including
language that may be harmful to
some audience members.
We will be sharing our efforts to
remove this language from our
products, content and culture at
Cisco.
If at any point you feel
uncomfortable, please feel free to
exit the session, and reach out
directly with questions, or requests
for more information in a format
that works for you.

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Howdy!
I’m Adrienne Moherek, a Developer Experience
Technical Leader at Cisco.
We make Cisco APIs better for developers.
We treat docs like code for over 1000 code
repositories across Cisco’s products and
platforms.
I enjoy gardening, hiking, board & card games,
and work in Austin, Texas.

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Check out:
Docs Like Code
Third Edition

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Social Justice Journey
Overview
Policy to Practice
Code and Config Examples
Resources and Questions

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Social Justice Journey

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Power an Inclusive
Future for All
We must help bridge gaps of
inequity by using our
technology, extended
ecosystem, and the expertise
of our teams, while creating
more opportunities for more
people, and acting responsibly
to drive change.
- Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Cisco’s Social
Justice Actions
1. Support community partnerships,
legislation, and advocacy
2. Increase representation
3. Expand fair pay
4. Increase board diversity
5. Deliver inclusive culture and anti-
discrimination training
6. Connect leaders and employees
7. Transform our supplier ecosystem
8. Commit to HBCUs
9. Support diverse-owned companies
10. Diversify our partner ecosystem
11. Invest in next-generation tech innovation
12. Integrate human rights and inclusion
across our business

9. Human Rights
Impacts in our operations and
supply chain
Accessibility
Advise & Train Product Teams on
Accessibility throughout the Product
Development Lifecycle
Inclusive Language
• Implement Cisco’s Inclusive Language Policy
• Build Employee Awareness about Inclusive Language
• Drive Compliance across Cisco’s Functions
• Engage Community and share Best Practices
• Embed a Culture of Belonging via Governance Models
12. Integrate human rights and inclusion across our
business

10. Inclusivity encompasses multiple aspects
• Gender neutrality including pronouns, non-binary typing
• Respectful language without drawing upon stereotypes
• People first, humans are humans not abilities or diagnoses
• Inclusive representation and avoiding idioms
• Accessibility including screen reader experiences

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Policy to Practice

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Policies on Inclusive Language
Promote and facilitate replacing harmful and exclusionary language in tech
Term Recommended Replacements
master / slave
primary/secondary
or
primary/subordinate
or
control/data (for clustering)
whitelist / blacklist
permit (list)/block (list)
or
allow (list)/block (list)

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Word Lists

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
No Change
Word List

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Word Lists like an
API Contract • Documentation
• Versioning
• Backwards-compatibility
• Roadmap

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Document changes

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SDO-0284-2DC-5N
Internal
Code
Document
Product
Output
Customer
Interfaces
Internal
Tools
Where can we apply policies on inclusive language?

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1. Stakeholders
2. Inventory
3. Categories
4. Plan
5. Tracking
People. Process. Tools.

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Code and Config Examples

20. Category #1
Variable names
or comments that
are internal to
code. No impact
to customers and
no external
visibility.
Asset Categories
Category #2
CLI (config, show),
API, or schema
use. Deprecate
the old use and
create a new one
with a text alias.
This is complex
and customer-
facing; new and
old must work.
Category #3
Logs, telemetry,
monitoring:
Support old and
new (don’t break
customer scripts).
Deprecate the old
but cutover to
new.
Category #4
Documentation
changes: Simple
cases are easy to
do. Complex cases
(like documenting
a CLI) must follow
product changes.
Code and Configuration Examples

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
https://github.com/CiscoDevNet search for “slave”
Category 1 example

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Open Source Inventory Tool
https://github.com/cisco-open/inclusive-language
• Uses the GitHub REST API
• Identify where non-inclusive terms
are used in your GitHub org
• Identify repos in an org that should
change their default branch to main

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
https://github.com/cisco-open/inclusive-language

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Project Manager Friendly: Open in Excel

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Ruleset for
“woke” linter
and
Jenkins job
https://github.com/get-woke/woke

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VS Code:
AlexJS Linter
Extension

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© 2023 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
How can I check my
code and user-facing
documentation against
our policy?
How do we know if our
code base is compliant?
Clarity on success,
measurement,
transparency
What data can tell us
when it’s critical to add a
term to our policy?
How do we quantify our
risk exposure based on
the current policy?
How do we measure the
amount of change
needed for today’s
policy?
How do we measure the
impact of a change in
our policy?

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Looking Forward:
New Terms and Impact on Code vs. Culture
Goal: Centralized governance for policy and language decisions
Begin New
term
Culture
or Code?
Engineering Change
Process
General
tool/documentation
update
End
Questions that keep us up at night:
1. Governance structure – Which terms are critical enough to justify a company-wide
change in code, and why? And How?
2. US vs. Global intake process – Why wouldn’t we include global terms in our policy?
3. Scale - How do we meet all language needs for all roles?

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Resources and Questions

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Inclusive Language Resources
Inclusive Naming Initiative
Language recommendation lists
https://inclusivenaming.org/word-lists/
Cisco’s Public Policy on Inclusive Naming
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/
social-justice/inclusive-language-policy.html
Inventory Tools and Example Ruleset
https://github.com/cisco-open/
inclusive-language

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What can you do to advance Inclusive Language?
Create an inventory of your engineering assets
(code, log files, telemetry data, standards).
Reflect on your own use of language.
Consider what you can do in your role, and with
your unique skills, to advance this work.
Take a Linux Foundation training on inclusive speaking
(LFC101) and inclusive open source practices (LFC102)

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Thank you!
Inclusive, Accessible Tech:
Bias-Free Language in
Code and Configurations
Adrienne Moherek
Developer Experience, Cisco
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amoherek
https://github.com/cisco-open/inclusive-language