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Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

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Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#141

Post by chris_wot »

culi wrote: post #126
chris_wot wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been terminology used since the 80s. Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been around for a long time. It was coined by DEC. It’s also the reason why Arabic text can be output on the screen, Ruby characters can be used and screen mirroring is usable for UIs that need RTL layouts. You really should look it up before criticising it. It deals with things as small and as important as date form…

> Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been around for a long time idk if you're responding to the wrong user, but I never made the claim that it hasn't been...

“Haven't heard l10n.”

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#142

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

onion2k wrote: post #81
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accessibility is not a critical business function the same way running Twitter's datacenters is a critical business function. I work at $LARGE_CORPORATION and our product a11y team's most recent major ship was a new palette of colors with improved contrast ratios. A UI change that makes the site easier to read for < 1% of users does not contribute meaningfully to incremental revenue. If I were Musk I would have cut t…

When I added a similar feature to an app a few years ago I found about 5% of users selected the high contrast theme. Our UX person talked to users and found loads of people using crappy old corporate LCD monitors that should have gone in the bin years ago found it really useful. The moral of the story is that users who don't need a feature will still use it.

A few months back I enabled some high contrast and white point settings on my iPhone.

I’m not visually impaired, but the UI is just so much better now. It’s made me stop and fiddle with the accessibility settings in other things too.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#143

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

Nullabillity wrote: post #98
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this part of that social contract I never get to read? I think every headline about layoffs and restructurings and companies shutting down are proof that some people do in fact get to fire whoever they want whenever they want.

> civilized societies

Very Hobbesian.

Civilized companies either don’t exist or don’t follow that social contract because it has been replaced with a different contract: an at will employment agreement.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#144

Post by s1artibartfast »

kjeetgill wrote: post #46
adam_arthur wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before it was that private companies could do whatever they wanted, now many trying to impose their will on Twitter’s actions all of a sudden. Huh

> Huh Before you let that cynicism build up too much, for the record, not all of us Elon+Twitter skeptics have a problem with the $8 thing. You're just not going to hear from any one who didn't have an issue with it. Related: Is there a quippy term or a fallacy for the (very natural!) habit of treating a random sample of a million voices and expecting a coherent message from them? I feel like it's related but distinc…

After thinking on it, maybe it is a form of unintentional straw man. People are attacking a hypothetical position and view that is a synthesis of many people and only is combined in their mind.

There is also a reverse no true Scotsman, I've seen referenced as dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid. Not as catchy as no true Scotsman but you're basically imagining a perfect Scotsman and then attacking them when they don't exist

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#145

Post by infamia »

trashdigitalnom wrote: post #128
over_bridge wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pass single payer healthcare so that being fired isn't a potentially life or death scenario and there may be some merit to your comment. If people are safe whether employed or not then by all means fire at will. It's rude but not morally bankrupt in that case.

Life happens. And no being fired is not life and death scenario. If you want healthcare you need to find other work. If you can’t find other work then move to other places. If you can’t move to other places then you need to question what made you got into this hole of dependence to your employer from the first place. If you are skillfull and bring value to your employer why would the fire you and why would other empl…

> Layoffs are great. They weed out the unproductive ones.

The vast majority of most layoffs I've seen are either hastily thrown together hail marys or just done looking at how much money they need to cut and then look more or less 100% at compensation or something even more stupid. For companies of any considerable size, rare is the strategic layoff. What Elon did at Twitter is a perfect example of slashing for a number. Elon has not been around long enough to understand what's up or down at Twitter. He has a number in mind he wants to get down to and he just slashes until he gets there. Assuming there are substantial cuts that need to be made, Elon has no clue where he is slashing fat vs. bone, he hasn't been there long enough to know.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#146

Post by CodeAndCuffs »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #64
culi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh I don't consider making an app accessible to be contributing to the problem of a "bloated headcount". Maybe the team itself had too many people on it, but to axe the entire team is pretty disgusting and shows a complete disregard for an entire class of people's needs

Accessibility is not a critical business function the same way running Twitter's datacenters is a critical business function. I work at $LARGE_CORPORATION and our product a11y team's most recent major ship was a new palette of colors with improved contrast ratios. A UI change that makes the site easier to read for < 1% of users does not contribute meaningfully to incremental revenue. If I were Musk I would have cut t…

Circa 2017 when IE8 compatibility was still a thing, I saw a metric that said more people use screen readers and/or have poor enough vision to need some sort of UI accomodation than there were IE8 users

Some very brief googling suggests about 3% of Americans are visually disabled. Having a team ensure your product is available to an extra 3% of people seems like a potentially reasonable investment.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#147

Post by miki123211 »

onion2k wrote: post #81
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accessibility is not a critical business function the same way running Twitter's datacenters is a critical business function. I work at $LARGE_CORPORATION and our product a11y team's most recent major ship was a new palette of colors with improved contrast ratios. A UI change that makes the site easier to read for < 1% of users does not contribute meaningfully to incremental revenue. If I were Musk I would have cut t…

When I added a similar feature to an app a few years ago I found about 5% of users selected the high contrast theme. Our UX person talked to users and found loads of people using crappy old corporate LCD monitors that should have gone in the bin years ago found it really useful. The moral of the story is that users who don't need a feature will still use it.

This is how accommodations work, and have always worked.

From what I've heard from people in the industry, apparently a significant portion of users consuming audio described movies and TV shows, originally aimed at blind people, are truck drivers who have to look at the road, not the screen.

Audiobooks and OCR technology, also originally developed with the blind in mind, are now used by many fully-abled people in their lives.

Closed captions, originally intended for the hearing-impaired, are now a staple of many bars, where the chatter is so loud that nobody can hear the TV.

There are many more examples.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#148

Post by thiht »

trashdigitalnom wrote: post #122
Nullabillity wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how civilized societies work. You don't just get to fire whoever you want whenever you want.

You spelled communism wrong.

What on Earth does it have to do with communism?

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#149

Post by sosull »

skissane wrote: post #138
sosull wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immanuel Kant came up with the idea of a categorical imperative. It’s one of the foundation stones in the field of moral philosophy (or ethics). An example would be the moral requirement not to kill other people. The only way to successfully prove that there are no moral requirements is by arguing the point with people who don’t know any better.

There are many philosophers who disagree with Kant's categorical imperative though – even among those who agree that ethics is objective (in some sense). The categorical imperative gives morality a deontological flavour, to which many will object–such as consequentialists. And there are others who don't object to the deontological flavour per se , but who think there are better foundations for such a morality (e.g. n…

It was a somewhat rushed point, admittedly. I was reaching for enlightenment-era imagery to challenge the seeming disavowal of morality itself. I note that OP extended those remarks elsewhere to claim that the law is the preferred source of moral constraint. I'm not even sure of what to say to that.

But I very much appreciate the depth of your point. I've always found validation (?) in the deontological aspect of Kant's idealism because I think it neatly describes why people feel obligations to those they interact with most closely (i.e. I feed my child because I should, rather than to avoid his hunger). I certainly take your point that the categorical imperative isn't the best or only tool for interpreting moral dilemmas. Honestly, I was bringing it up in part because it's a recognisable phrase that might infer that there's more to the question of ethics than unexamined instinct.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#150

Post by jacooper »

superb-owl wrote: post #23
jacooper wrote: post #5

I mean if I need to lower costs ASAP, nice to haves like A11y would be the first to get cut.

a11y is no more a "nice to have" than a wheelchair ramp. It's a legal and moral requirement. This is like saying security is "nice to have"

Nope, security affects way more users than accessibility.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33497445

And firing the A11y team doesn't immediately remove all accessibility from Twitter, they are forced by US law to follow accessibility standards and they would, they just won't do higher than what's required.

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