Forms are the front door to government services—for everything from getting a job to a COVID-19 vaccine—yet their current design creates systemic barriers for LGBTQ+ people.

Forms shape how our government understands, prioritizes, and addresses the needs of its people, but for LGBTQ+ communities, many government forms include demographic questions that are unnecessarily invasive, inadequate, and unclear in their purpose. This deepens mistrust, creates barriers to critical benefits, and prevents collection of data needed to provide effective, equitable services.

In this talk, U.S. Digital Service team members will share lessons learned from direct engagement with an intersectional group of LGBTQ+ nonprofit organizations and researchers and statisticians across government and standards organizations as well as an examination of underlying policies and tech systems. We’ll provide a framework for navigating sexual orientation and gender identity, as a first step toward designing equitable forms for all.