Words can shut people out as surely as a button the keyboard cannot reach. Maggioli’s
products speak to everyone who works in and with the public administration, so they do not
assume who that person is: their gender, their abilities, their origin, their age.
In general
The person comes first, not their condition: a person with a disability, not a
disabled.Say what you mean. Metaphors drawn from disability, gender or origin say it badly, and
they do not translate.Ask only what is needed. Gender, or any other personal data, only when a procedure
requires it, with the words and the values that procedure uses, and saying why.Accept people as they are. A form takes the names people have: apostrophes, accents,
spaces, more than one surname (D’Angelo, Nicolò, De Santis Rossi), and the documents and
addresses of those who are not Italian.
Disability
Since 2024, Italian law itself speaks this way: Legislative Decree 62/2024 replaced
“handicap” with “condition of disability”, and “disabled” and “differently abled” with
“person with a disability”, in every law.“People with disabilities”, not “the disabled” or “the handicapped”.“Has” or “lives with”, not “suffers from” or “is afflicted by”.“Uses a wheelchair”, not “confined to a wheelchair”.“Most users” or “users without disabilities”, not “normal users”.Say what you mean, not “blind to”, “deaf to”, “crazy” or “paralyzed”: “unaware of”,
“ignores”, “surprising”, “stopped”.In the text of the interface, prefer on and off, active and inactive, to enabled and
disabled: disabled is the name of an attribute in the code, not a word for users.
The service also works with screen readers and voice control.The service can be used even by the blind.
Gender
Address the user directly, as “you”.When the gender of a person is not known, write about the role or use “they”.Do not tie roles to a gender: the mayor, the judge and the clerk can be anyone.
Applicants receive a receipt by PEC.Each applicant will receive his receipt by PEC.
In Italian
Italian marks gender in nouns, adjectives and participles, so it needs more care:The generic masculine leaves out half the readers. Prefer collective and neutral forms:
“le persone”, “il personale”, “la cittadinanza”, “chi presenta la domanda”.Rewrite rather than mark. “Sei sicuro di voler uscire?” becomes “Vuoi uscire?”;
“Benvenuto” becomes “Ti diamo il benvenuto”.Feminine titles for women: “la sindaca”, “l’avvocata”, “l’assessora”, or the title the
person uses for herself.No asterisks, no schwa. “Tutt*” and “tuttə” are read badly or skipped by screen
readers, and many people do not know how to read them: rewrite the sentence instead.Double forms sparingly. “Cittadine e cittadini” works in a title or a greeting, not in
every sentence of a text.
Origin and culture
No colors as metaphors of good and bad: a blocklist and an allowlist, not a blacklist and a
whitelist.No master and slave for systems: primary and replica. The main branch of the Magma
repository is called main, not master, for the same reason.What is unfamiliar to the writer is not exotic or strange to the reader.
Age
Do not assume that older people struggle with technology, or that young people do not: “so
easy even your grandmother can use it” offends grandmothers, and helps nobody.