As a woman of color with non-apparent disabilities, a non-traditional education/career path, and first-generation professional worker, I encounter a lot of barriers collaborating with colleagues both in the workplace, academia, and within my W3C groups. I get it, it's a societal problem and many are trying to work on it.

One thing we neglect to consider, especially when we seek a "pattern of behavior", is the impact on the individual harmed. There's stress, impact on health, an inability to focus or concentrate, sleep interference, and more. An individual unaware of their harmful behavior is causing unnecessary strain on an already disadvantaged individual.

I would like to see us do more to improve the collaborative environment by actively tackling the lack of awareness amongst our members, especially chairs.

In my grad school work I encountered the book Justice by Michael Sandel. A concise paper he wrote is also available online. He writes about justice, democracy, and society. This is a quote from the paper:

One is the utilitarian idea of maximizing welfare or happiness. The second is the idea that justice means respecting freedom and human dignity. The third says that justice has to do with honoring and recognizing virtues, and the goods implicit in social practices. The first two, the utilitarian and the freedom-based theories of justice, are most familiar in contemporary law and political theory. What I’d like to argue here today, and what I argue in the book, is that the first two conceptions of justice are inadequate. I’d like to defend a version of the third conception, the one that says justice has something to do with honoring, recognizing, promoting, and cultivating virtues and goods implicit in social practices.

I, too, would like to suggest that we have a responsibility to cultivate virtue and healthy collaboration amongst the W3C participants. The amount of burden that the unaware are placing upon already disadvantaged individuals is significant and has led to some people withdrawing from participation or leaving the W3C. Recently, I heard from other women of color who are experiencing harms in their group and I've been described as taking up too much space, my self-review approach ahead of horizontal review questioned (despite being in the working group that does the actual review), and saw a colleague berated by a chair. Thankfully, the chair later apologized, but it doesn't address the harm caused. I know many people with disabilities who left the W3C after encountering resistance to inclusion.

I would like to discuss how we might address the harmful impact of the unaware. Perhaps a "pattern of behavior" is not appropriate when disrespectful and abusive actions occur, due to the effect on the receiver. I am not sure what is feasible, yet I think the lost productivity and the health and financial damage is significant enough that we should consider how we might improve the collaboration environment for the historically excluded contributors.