Every field on your details is optional

The name

Three boxes, and none of them required

Given, middle and family name are three fields rather than one, and any of them can be left blank — the family name included. A form that insists on a surname has decided which word in your name is the surname, and that guess is wrong for a lot of people. Refusing to save until the box is filled punishes exactly the ones it gets wrong.

The columns landed yesterday morning, on the household’s own row, where the isolation rule and the erasure walk already reach them. The note about them ended with a block saying no app asks for any of this yet. That block is what this note closes.

Gender

A box to type in, not a list to choose from

Gender is a text field. There is no menu of options, because a menu is somebody else’s list of what a person is allowed to be, and every short list is wrong for somebody. It can be left empty like everything else here.

The address

Half an address beats a refused one

The address is the six parts a postal address has, and not one of them is required either. Somebody who knows the street and not the postcode gets to keep the street. A form that holds the whole thing back until every line is filled loses what the person did know, and nobody comes back later to finish it.