When inclusion efforts end with hurting others Inclusion is one of Bloom’s Community Values. From our website: “Bloom invites everyone to express themselves, organize, connect, and celebrate. Bloom will not tolerate any sexism, racism, transphobia, fatphobia, or ableism. Creating an inclusive and welcoming space requires work from all of us, especially those who have benefited from unequal power dynamics and move through the world with more privilege.” Recently, we received 2 reminders that our inclusion work at Bloom is not complete (and will never be). First, a low-vision member reached out and shared their long and painful onboarding experience using a screen reader device. While we quickly addressed the issues this acted as a good reminder to actively hold other people’s experience when we build and test our app development. Later, we learned that a past Bloom event was executed in a way that hurt and harmed attendees, mostly due to a lack of awareness and competency about the unique experience this community holds. We are in the process of repairing with the impacted people, but I want to personally apologize to anyone who was harmed due to this experience, and invite you to reach out and connect on the topic. | 
