Beth Granter

Freelance digital consultant for charities


Gender diversity fail / transphobia by Channel 4


In my series of posts about registration forms and user interface design, and how you need to understand the basics of identity politics when you’re designing a form to collect identity data, Channel 4 is the latest to fail the test. Not only does it only offer binary gender options of Male and Female, it also makes choosing one of them compulsory. If you haven’t read my previous posts on the topic (see Related Posts below), there are plenty of examples of a better way to do this.

First, allow an alternative to Male and Female, typically ‘Other’ is used.

Second, don’t make selecting a gender compulsory.

It’s not that hard. Google manages it as well as plenty of other large sites. It’s just another database field. Sort it out Channel 4! Stop excluding people who aren’t Male or Female, and those who might not want to tell you how they define!

Channel 4 gender diversity fail

p.s. of course I’m not born in 1994, I just did this for the screenshot!


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