Edit: Another option rather than adding to Applied Accessibility would be to make a new section “Applied Inclusiveness” that focuses on teaching ways to ensure that gender, race, sex, sexuality, romantic attraction, mental health needs and other sensitive subjects (when applicable to the subject of the website) are integrated into core webdesign when possible and relevant (mental health resources, dating websites, web surveys, etc etc) to ensure that those resources remain inclusive.
Original post:
Canada and many other nations are expanding gender surveys to include Non-binary gender options. Likewise, many large corporations are also starting to include Non-binary genders in their gender forms. This is important for Trans people and Intersex people, who’s gender and sex don’t fit the traditional assumptions society has of gender and sex.
However, in the Applied accessibility section here:
The subject of gender is barely brought up, and the subject of non-binary genders and how to make websites more accessible for people outside the Gender Binary isn’t discussed, saying “…the choices are self-explanatory, like a gender selection”. This is especially relevant for websites like Dating Websites (okcupid.com for instance), where gender can be an especially important to ensure the websites are usable and accessible by Non-binary genders.
As a result of this change in the society conception, the web training needs to change to ensure programmers are ready to implement more nuanced ways of representing gender on the Web, especially for countries where the laws are starting to change. This could include making gender a input that allows people to type in their Gender Identity, just like how people will type in their name. Another possible method would be to add a third checkbox with “Non-binary” in it, or perhaps an “other” category that then allows the user to enter their gender if it is not a Man or Woman.
As an aside, Its also important that when gender is asked, man and woman and non-binary are the options. When a person’s sex is asked, male female and intersex should be options. This is because Gender and Sex are not the same. It can make web surveys and web content more accessible, since its not forcing people to respond to questions about their gender with their sex assigned at birth or vice versa. Not to mention that for increasing demand of healthcare websites, it is often important that sex and gender are asked separate, and only when necessary, to ensure incorrect health care isn’t prescribed due to the forms not including a means to express gender except in terms of sex.
Like all subjects on Free Code Camp besides the projects, this should be an optional challenge since not every website will need to have this at the moment. But considering that this is already happening both on corporate levels and government levels in many countries, I think this is a very important subject to at least address for web developers wanting to find ways to be more accessible in their gender representation just like in their accessibility for other areas.