Member Jungle Is For Everyone

As a kid, I attended a preschool for the hearing and visual impaired, though I am neither. My mum was a psychologist there, and my parents got reduced enrollment fees. I think. I was like four, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the family finances. 

Once at like three of four, I tried to lead an escape attempt from the preschool, like something out of Rugrats. I don’t remember why, but I assume it was my general disdain for authority. It turns out it’s quite hard to be a rage-filled, James Dean type when adults can just pick you up and force you to have nap time. The escape attempt obviously didn’t work, but I have a vivid memory of being bollocked for being the ringleader of this little reneged bunch.

 

 

Due to this preschool, I became fluent in ASL, and we ended up with several long-term family friends who had kids my age who had varying disabilities. Growing up, I had a very good family friend with Cerebral Palsy. Our families used to go on holidays together, and somewhere, there is a photo of us at Uluru as kids. 

Now, I’m not claiming to understand what it’s like to have any form of disability because I plainly don’t. All I’m saying is that this is something I’ve seen first-hand; I’ve seen the struggles and fights that disabled people have to go through to just exist in this world. As a result, It’s something I’m passionate about. 

Before you ask, I don’t still know ASL. It has unfortunately atrophied from my brain due to a lack of use. 

Now, the reason I’m talking about this today is that recently, a disability support advocacy group approached us at Member Jungle, enquiring about using our membership management system to help manage their association. As several of their members and administrators have disabilities, they first needed to check if our system had the appropriate accessibility options. These include high-contrast text and buttons for those with visual impairments, subtitles on videos for those with hearing impairments, and a whole lot more. 

Apparently, our system was already pretty good, but there was definitely room for improvement. For example, we needed to update some of our main blog images, like the one below. 

 

 

Our old format is on the left, and our new one is on the right. The transparent background and green writing on a green background didn’t have enough contrast and were hard to read for people with visual impairments. It’s pretty simple stuff, really, but we had never stopped to consider this. So, we are currently working to update everything we can to make our website and management system as accessible as possible. 

We are still in the early stages of working with this group, but we were more than happy to make these changes to make the system more accessible for them. These were changes we needed to make, and in the long term, they will help a lot more people than just this one association. 

So, I thought I’d take this opportunity to showcase some of the other inclusive features that Member Jungle has implemented. The purpose of this article isn’t to be a pat on the back for us but rather to let anyone who may need different options added to a membership system so they can make full use of it know to ask us. We can’t promise we can implement every request. Still, if there is a barrier between someone and their ability to use our system, we will do our best to remove it.     

So, without any further mucking about on my part, let’s get into how Member Jungle has added new features and tweaks to help people with diverse needs. 

Accessibility Options For People With Disabilities

Since we first started working with the disability support group, we have been working off the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to ensure that our website and membership management system are in line with the internationally recognised guidelines for websites that are easily accessible to all people. I’ve already mentioned a few things that this has included, but it’s been things like increasing text contrast, adding subtitles, ensuring there are no keyboard traps, ensuring that the web content is written in easy-to-understand language and is not needlessly complicated, and much more.

You can see more details on these guidelines at Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

If anyone is reading this who needs some particular accessibility options that Member Jungle doesn’t currently have, reach out and ask us. We can’t make any promises, but we will do our best. 

Options For Gender Diverse People 

This is a smaller one as far as what has been changed in the system, but it’s still an important one. Early this year, Member Jungle added several options to its “Gender” category in the member forms. This way, when you or your members are setting up your details, you can choose the gender and title that you prefer. 

Currently, the gender options that are available in member forms are: 

• Male
• Female
• Non-Binary
• Transgender
• Intersex
• Other 
• Prefer not to say

While I was looking into which gender options we had, I did notice that there wasn’t really a gender-neutral option in the “Title” section, except for Dr and Prof. So, I’ve raised this with the tech team, and they will be adding Mx to the “Title” section of the member form in the following product release. 

Now, I’m not non-binary, and I suggested Mx, as it is the gender-neutral title that I am most familiar with. So, if there is a better option or an option you wish we had, reach out and let us know. We’ll be more than happy to add it in. The same goes for the gender options.  

Again, this was something that had totally slipped our minds to add to the system until someone came along and asked if we could do it. So, if there are more things that we should add, please let us know. 

Character Options For Other Languages 

In 2023, Member Jungle introduced the option to incorporate multibyte character sets into the system. This allows clubs and associations, for example, to use Chinese characters instead of English ones throughout the system. 

To be honest, there isn’t really a lot more to it than that. An association came along and asked if they would be able to use Chinese characters in the system. We said, “Oh, no one’s ever asked for that before; give us a month, and we’ll add it in for you,”. 

You know what I’m going to say here: if you are out there wondering if we can add a certain language option, just ask, and we’ll see how what we can do. 

Membership Management Software For Anyone

The Point I’m driving at is pretty obvious. Member Jungle is a highly flexible system that can be used by 30-person fishing clubs who are catching more beers than fish to massive medical associations with tens of thousands of professional members to organise. It is a flexible, adaptive system that is constantly evolving. If you have a specific need or request that would allow you to better use the system or feel more comfortable doing so, just ask. We can’t promise to implement everything, but we will give it a fair shake.  

For more information on how and why we are constantly updating and improving Member Jungle, check out Member Jungle Product Releases: What It Means For Your Club.

To find out more about how to suggest features, have a look at How Feature Suggestions Work With Member Jungle.