Writing a gender equal future through embedded code

In a world where gender equality is increasingly falling off the
agenda due to right wing politics, disinformation and a cacophony
of issues, the need for ways to address gender bias is needed
more than ever.

Language and written culture plays a big part in how we form
our views of the world. We created a tool that intercepts that
bias at the point at which it enters the world, the written word,
developing a typeface that challenges us to think about our
bias while helping to remove it as the user types.

Sans Gender is a sans serif typeface inspired by the
suffragette movement. It is a family that consists of 8 weights
– thin through to extrabold and has a full set of glyphs. The
real magic though is in the code that sits within the OpenType
functionality of the font’s glyphs. By identifying over 100
gendered terms and hard coding them into the typeface, Sans
Gender is able to pick up on a needlessly gendered term as
it is being typed and seamlessly swap it for a pre-rendered
inclusive term.

We have released the code for anyone to use. The potential
for Sans Gender is to be integrated into any and every
typeface that exists. By creating a scalable open source code
our ambition is for everyone to take the idea and play with it,
adapting it for their local language, as well as adding to the
bank of words that exist in the code.

As an industry that is at the intersection of culture and
communication, Sans Gender is perfectly positioned to
create the impact that it can have on gender bias across all
communication and arts industries.