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The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

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Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#41

Post by peter_stokes »

munk-a wrote: post #38
TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

> Sure, spending more on transit is a good idea, but it's not the tech companies' fault that it's perennially underfunded I think your overall point is relatively sound but that example is just terrible... Elon Musk has repeatedly lobbied against transit expansion and his Hyperloop pitch arguably derailed HSR talks in California for half a decade while the Las Vegas teslertube prevented the expansion of a monorail to…

HSR derailed itself. CA takes 95% of the blame

agreed on the LV monorail though

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#43

Post by croes »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

Changing infrastructure would cost way less than buying hardware for all disabled people.

So you don’t solve the problem, you just solve it for a tiny group of wealthy people

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#44

Post by the_other »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

It's both "the entire nation's infrastructure." and not that.

What I mean is... many cases are individual: the ramp for that library; the door knobs/handles in that office; the floor indicators in this lift/elevator; the audio announcements (or lack of) on the busses/trains; the small print on contracts; live subtitling at the theatre; the checkout button on this web site; the checkout button on that website. You get the idea.

The vast majority of cases are individual; owned by myriad businesses, charities, foundations.

The problem the OP is circling is the same as that proposed by the Social Model of disability. Most systems present obstacles to disabled users which could have been avoided if those systems' owners and designers and included disabled people in the design phase. Instead, no-one does this claiming it's too expensive, forgetting they themselves will be disabled in the future (most people become disabled in one way or another, with age). We all kick the can down the road, rather than deal with it today. Dealing with it is hard. The "national level infrastructure" aspect is a mixture of cultural praxis/expectation and, potentially, government carrot to go with the (existing) government stick (regulation; that most people try to ignore).

(I'm not saying the Social Model of Disability is 100% right. I feel it's viewpoint is hugely instructive it's not the whole story.)

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#46

Post by HoldOnAMinute »

>> You can’t give a TED Talk about a ramp.

>> You can’t get venture capital funding for a slightly wider doorframe.

>> Concrete is not "disruptive."

Well, not with that attitude.

You simply need these 3 things:

1. A revenue subscription model

2. Execute at massive scale by leveraging AI

3. An advertising model

Now you can change the world

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#47

Post by shemtay »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

> perennially underfunded

I remember voting to fund high speed rail, and the funding was quite generous...

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#48

Post by [deleted] »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #9
scottlamb wrote: post #7

The author is seeing that it's easier for one team to get backing (VC money, course credit, design awards, TED talk applause, etc.) for "solving" an accessibility problem than for us to enforce that entire industries follow good accessibility practices in new work and retrofit existing work. In theory industry-wide enforcement is the sort of thing legislation like the ADA solves, but obviously that hasn't been comple…

Yeah, it kinda feels like a banal thing to hate on. "They're only doing this because it's easier to create a prototype invention than to redo all design standards and enforcement in the country!" I mean, yeah? What exactly is the implied alternative for the sort of individuals targeted by the blog post?

[deleted]

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#49

Post by hamdingers »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #11
calcifer wrote: post #2

> I don’t need a stair-climbing wheelchair that costs $30,000 and requires a maintenance crew. I need better doorknobs and/or a ramp. But a ramp is boring. You can't make investors have a hard on for a ramp that doesn't connect to the cloud. You can’t give a TED Talk about a ramp. You can’t get venture capital funding for a slightly wider doorframe.

It's a really cynical way to attack people who are at least sort of trying to help. And obviously the inventions of "a ramp" and "slightly wider door" already exist; those aren't a matter of invention, they're a matter of regulations and enforcement.

Trying to help does not give you a free pass. Pushing a wheelchair user up a ramp without asking their permission first is both "trying to help" and inconsiderate (and scary and dangerous).

Before inventing a more advanced stair climbing wheelchair, you should ask a few wheelchair users if stairs are really the issue they need solving.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#50

Post by JohnMakin »

wredcoll wrote: post #31
JohnMakin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The casual ableism is not unique to tech but I do notice its prevalence, both here and in my career. I am slightly disabled physically, I've made comments here a time or two where someone will make a (probably unintentionally) dismissive comment like "This is easy, just do XYZ every day" and I'll make a comment like "lots of people cannot do XYZ every day due to disability" and there's a literal backlash of commenter…

I mean, there's a lot going on here, contextually speaking. If I made a comment saying "oh just write a quick bash script to change all the files to pngs" and someone commented saying "lots of people cannot write a bash script because they don't know bash", is that a useful comment?

It's in the context of health, which is what most relevant discussions regarding a disability would arise here. It's worth noting that the original comment "just do" also probably isn't very helpful to a discussion.
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