The I Am Not a Typo campaign managed to get tech companies' attention. So what happened next?

We hear from one of the campaign organisers about the conversations with tech giants - and whether anything actually changed.

This is Part 2 of “What’s in a name?”, a new mini-series about autocorrect and inclusive technology.

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New to the series? Start with Part 1

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Enjoying the show? Leave a rating to help others discover it, or share your autocorrect story at madeforuspod@gmail.com

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About Cathal Wogan

Cathal Wogan is a lead collaborator with I Am Not A Typo, a collective aiming to create social change so no one feels like an oversight. I Am Not A Typo looks at the link between identity and technology, and its flagship UK-based campaign asks tech giants to update their name dictionaries to better reflect the modern multi-cultural United Kingdom.

Cathal is a Senior Consulting Director at communications consultancy Blurred, the agency that convenes I Am Not A Typo and its many cross-industry collaborators.

Learn more about I Am Not A Typo: https://www.iamnotatypo.org/

Follow Cathal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathal-wogan/

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We're all created to be happy, brilliant people and we're going to advocate for the companies that see us and we feel like reflect us or at least acknowledge our existence and acknowledge our needs.

You're listening to Made For Us. I’m Tosin Sulaiman. This is part two of What's in a Name. Last time we met the people behind I Am Not A Typo, a campaign pushing tech companies to fix autocorrect. They succeeded in getting the attention of all the big players. The question is, did anything actually change? Today, …. one of the organizers behind I Am Not A Typo, takes us behind the scenes of those conversations with the tech giants and tells us what's next. Here's our conversation.

So I Am Not A Typo has created headlines around the world. We've been in media in I think every continent that has media, but we definitely got attention from most of the tech companies that are arbiters of this sort of technology. We've had conversations with multiple people at every single one of the big ones that you know and love or possibly dislike. And they have all broadly been really engaged. They've said, fair enough, you've identified an interesting issue.

And then what happens next in each of those conversations is really interesting. In some instances we've had, well, actually this is just the way the product works for X, Y, Z reason. And we're not going to change it. And other instances we've had, Oh, well, this is sort of part of a product roadmap and this is going to update algorithm key or relay over time. It's sort of a mealy-mouthed response. Then thankfully the most fruitful conversation we've had to date was actually in response to some posts that we put out on LinkedIn, we finally got a comment from one particular engineer at Microsoft and that was, you know, not a completely unique incident. What was unique about it was that it has eventually led to a really positive change.

Okay, and what's the change?

So as of this year, as of this summer or roundabout in Twenty Twenty Five, Microsoft had been working with us to acknowledge this issue in the first place. And this phenomenon that occurs to people with names that are not necessarily the most Anglo normative. They looked at all of the data that we put forward and I guess in response to our campaign and then in collaboration with us, they have implemented some fixes, they've been tested.

They're rolling out now across their platforms. So now as you or me type on Microsoft Word, it can be change that's so imperceptible. But as we go to invite all of our friends to our birthday party or all the friends, all the kids at our kids, children's classrooms, we will notice that a significant improvement has been made. If you're playing with Microsoft Word now, depending on the platform that you're using it on potentially, or depending on your latest software update, you should, ninety-nine times out of a hundred see that my name is no longer a typo. All of the names of the people that we've been advocating on behalf of have not been a typo.

So when you take the most recent year for which there’s data Twenty Twenty Four, and all of the baby names that were registered in England and Wales, that's been our sort of primary data set, which is interesting because it just fueled so much of our original campaigning. That has been the base data set that has been used to update these platforms. And now instead of a sort of forty one percent error rate for those names, it's a couple of percent, a half a percent, and even those are going to be worked on over time. So that's really pleasing. This is rolled out now. We'd like to see this roll out more and different products. If that's the first domino that falls and that gains attention from other tech companies that are arbiters of this technology,

That is absolutely the desired effect. There's no reason that these giant corporations with tremendous resources at their disposal can't make some positive changes for the better for the many.

And so the changes, is it just in the UK?

Our campaign has all been about the English brackets UK dictionaries, but that's the issue we've highlighted. That's the dataset that we have. That's the sort of geography we represent. This issue though, does occur in a sort of comparable way in other geographies. So all of these improvements are there to be done. We definitely want to champion the fact that someone has made a positive change in a major market, which is not to be overlooked. It's the easiest thing in the world for any of these companies to just be completely dismissive. What is admirable is to make a positive change. And I'm sure if there's continued spotlight on the positivity of that change, that similar things can be done for an English brackets US dictionary and English brackets Canada dictionary or think of all of the other languages and other countries that similar changes could be made in.

And so when you had these conversations with Microsoft, what do you think it was that pushed them to make this change?

I think Microsoft responded positively to the campaign because it was framed really constructively issue identification and a suggestion of, not a specific tech fix or an engineering fix, but a suggestion that we know that you guys work on a positive feedback loop, sort of closing this loop would be another example of you doing so again. And I think that's when we've worked with their engineers. They've just seen this as not an aggression in any way they said, Thank you for raising this issue. That's really interesting. Let us have a think about how we can fix this and any implications it might have on the rest of our product. They'll go away. They'll come up with some hypotheses of how it can be fixed. And then they can implement them in a test environment, and then if successful, roll out in that fashion to a public audience through product updates.

I think it's been really positive to work with them in that respect. They've fully just seen it as this is the whole point of a product feedback loop, just like they would respond to any other sort of customer issue. I think I would actively encourage that for other tech companies when they're seeing these changes or such changes proposed by people like us. We want to see the change get made. It's not a shame thing. It's a positive opportunity for collaboration.

I don't know the history of how long Microsoft have known about certain names not necessarily popping up. It's easy for us all to throw stones in glass houses and be like, you should have fixed this sooner or whatever. think to look at it, finally, that's the whole reason we raised this issue in the first place. know that through the power of campaigning, you can make sure that someone actually addresses it.

If you have falling out with your friend, but you don't tell them about it, then you haven't had a falling out. They might not realize their behavior is problematic. They may never look at themselves introspectively about what they could do to change. And even still, you might not have the conversation about what's the real core of the issue. You know, you can make this a interpersonal analogy, I think, and it's hopefully appropriate. But once the issue does come up and you're about earn as participants in that conversation and something gets done about it, that's there to be championed.

Beyond the ethical argument, do you think this was also motivated by the clear business case for them to fix this?

If I was a chief marketing officer or a chief product officer at a big tech company, I could not see any earthly reason why I would not want my products to be acceptable by and reflective of the widest group of people possible. I think there is in a very even simple commercial sense, there's a massive business case for designing with diverse markets in mind, with diverse cohorts of people in mind.

If you're even unwittingly excluding, and this is not just with regard autocorrect or spellcheck, but this is any sort of product design. How frustrating was that be for you as the product designer or as the product owner to realize that actually your product is not necessarily suitable or not reflective of ten percent of the population or twenty percent of the population or thirty percent of the population. And therefore as a senior leader in that company, do you not commercially feel like you're doing yourself a disservice if this otherwise remarkable commercial product is not hitting quite right for that audience? Like our campaign is about names. We're always thinking about, you know, if you were struggling with any other accessibility issue, for example, surely there is a benefit for the company producing any product to at least have your challenge in mind and to have inclusive design in mind.

We're all created to be happy, brilliant people. And we're going to advocate for the companies that see us and we feel reflect us or least acknowledge our existence and acknowledge our needs. And that's only going to lead to a different type of positive feedback loop where someone will say, this company actually sees me. This product actually recognizes me. This product has in this case made an actual change to recognize my culture in different way or my religion or my language or my ethnicity. I hope that there's no chief marketing officer that's going to dismiss that sort of positivity.

I wanted to talk about what's next for the campaign. You talked a little bit about this in terms of rolling this out to other types of dictionaries. What's the ultimate ambition for the I am not a typo movement?

I think there's probably two ways that I'm not typo can go and they're not mutually exclusive and might end up pursuing both. think when we originally founded I am not a typo, we had one specific problem in mind that was eminently actionable to us. It was something that we felt like we could really do something about, but we also undertook that challenge with a view to maybe spreading our eyes a little bit more widely around the tech landscape and looking at different issues that are kind of spiritually at harmony with what we've done before. for example, even when we started, I'm not typo AI was a footnote compared to the sort of headlines that it's made in like Twenty Twenty Five.

There's so many issues related to AI issues related to inclusivity with cultural bias that all have real world meaningful outcomes increasingly for a lot of people in their day to day professional lives, let alone their actual real lives. And we might look at issues like that and maybe advocate for them too. So we'd love to continue to fight the good fight for names, but we're also seeing what else is out there. What else could I am not a typo tackle that isn't necessarily directly typo related where we use our launching pad and where we use the, I guess, still small and modest, but reasonably powerful platform that we've got to create some conversations, change some conversations, and maybe even just make some other small changes.

What has it been like personally for you to work on this campaign?

It’s been very cool to work on this campaign. I'm not typos fueled by really great people primarily. And the only money that we've really ever spent on I am not typo. I think we pay twenty five quid every year for domain name. And that's close enough to everything. When you are doing something that's low to no budget and that is entirely fueled by passion, you'll realize very quickly when it's not fueled by passion. So it only exists and has only continued to have this positive effect because of the blood, sweat, tears, skills, expertise, strategic insight of loads of people who have given an hour, a couple of hours, several days, several weeks, several months of their lives to make what was just an idea a reality.

If you're able to tell your friend or tell your partner or what have you, that you've actually done something like this. That's a really cool thing. And I think that's not to be taken for granted. That actually stokes the appetites of people to do even more, so to look at bigger issues. We're not convinced that this is the biggest issue in the world. However, we've been able to identify something. We've been able to qualify it. We've been able to quantify it, argue for it, and to make some small dent in it.

What advice would you give to other creatives who want to use their craft to tackle sort of big issues like this versus maybe just selling a product?

If I could refer to your question, Tosin, like you suggest like use your craft and actually if you're coming up with, I want to do something in the world. The superpower that you have available to you is the one that's available to you. So that's not a bad place to start. I think what we did was come up with an idea and I'm not a typo. We made it a campaign because that's a part of the core skills of a lot of the people that were involved. We made sure that we didn't just arbitrarily focus on social media, but we had social media expertise. We had some degree of data expertise. We were able to use that. And we had PR people involved who were like, okay, I can, think I can make some headlines out of this.

So essentially, for anyone who wishes to use your superpower to use their craft, whether they be a designer, whether they be a developer, whether they be a communicator, rather than a marketer, think that superpower is a great place to start. It might give you an idea of the best tools and the most easily accessible tools at your disposal to create some kind of change. And if you can create a theory of change for what you want to do, an actual objective, that's a great place to start. You've got your tools, you've got some kind of objective or some kind of problem that you want to make it dent in. And then you just see how those two things can meet and you'll end up fleshing out a couple of ideas. And hopefully if you take one of them to fruition, you can make some kind of very small or potentially life changing change in the world.

How can people learn more? can they follow you, the campaign?

I think the best place to throw your voice behind this campaign, everything is at imnottybo.org and we love the support. We are very active on LinkedIn. We've made a very strategic choice to be that annoyingly active friend on LinkedIn. So that's a great place to find us. If you want to lend support, you want to get involved, you want to lend some expertise, we are here for it. You got any ideas, we can't wait to hear them.

Cathal, really great chatting with you and thank you so much for coming on the show.

It's been a joy, Tosin.

That was part two of What's in a Name. If this series is resonating with you, share it and leave a rating on Apple or Spotify. It helps others discover the show. And if you've got an autocorrect story of your own, email us at madeforuspod at gmail.com. Coming up.

I was so disgusted by the way in which my name was auto-corrected, but also by the repeated experience of writing names in emails that I was sending to other people. And at the point when I hit send, discovering that their name had been auto-corrected.

We meet the law professor who turned her frustration into research and hear her ideas for making auto-correct more inclusive.