The Polite Type

When it comes to toxic online culture and hate speech, the responsibility of technology companies is a hotly debated issue. As a global ICT company guided by Nordic values, TietoEVRY wanted to enter the public discussion and show that even big companies can take a stand by developing products that have social responsibility coded into them, like the Polite Type. The Polite Type is a font that automatically recognises and rewrites hate speech. With a few changes to the OpenType code, a word database with a replacement function could be integrated into the regular free font file, so that certain negative terms are immediately and automatically replaced with positive ones when they are written. In this way, the company has incorporated its values of inclusion and equality into a product that is available free of charge to a global audience, has been downloaded thousands of times in well over 100 countries, is used by non-governmental organisations and schools, and has generated a huge response in both social and analogue media.