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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

#51

Post by kjeetgill »

School-Cotton wrote: post #33
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not for "free speech" that costs $8/month.

AFAIK that’s a misconstrual. Having a “verified” blue checkmark will cost $8 a month, but using Twitter and saying whatever you want on it will still be free.

I have no horse in this race — I'm not on Twitter — but does anyone know if the blue checkmark boosts your posts in the feed/recommendation engine?

I'd expect it does implicitly at least because people must interact with those users differently.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#52

Post by notamy »

decremental wrote: post #39
_djo_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said diminishing accessibility and slowly cutting off disabled users. This obviously isn't going to happen immediately, but every new feature will be less accessible and maybe even not provide accommodations entirely.

Possibly true but I would imagine the team created an internal Bible of all accessibility requirements and that all of that information wasn't siloed in the heads of each employee in that department.

It's a sign of where it's going though. Will the accessibility info be kept up to date? Will the other teams pay attention to it as much if there's not an internal "force" keeping it on people's mind? Will it be considered at a similar level again in the future? The answer to all of these might be "yes," but getting rid of the employees who are most responsible for this doesn't exactly strike me as an act that views a11y favourably.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#53

Post by hoten »

fullsend wrote: post #14

The extreme and somehow flowery language in all these posts from Twitter engineers is so indicative to me of some kind of delusional rot. “My team worked SO hard every single day to Change The World, the smartest people on the planet Earth, the greatest engineers ever to touch a keyboard, no one has our scale, no one has our problems.” So caught up in their own bullshit that they are like fat, happy hens who don’t se…

Given this is just a series of positive testimonials of the skills of a manager's direct reports, all recently fired and looking for new work, your take comes off as extremely uncharitable.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

adam_arthur wrote: post #37
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not for "free speech" that costs $8/month.

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

> Before it was that private companies could do whatever they wanted,

No, it was that “free speech” means private actors are free to make decisions about what content to relay.

Not that everything they choose on that (or any other) is equally good, nor that they shouldn’t be punished in the marketplace (not by the state) for their bad choices.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#55

Post by sudosysgen »

fullsend wrote: post #14

The extreme and somehow flowery language in all these posts from Twitter engineers is so indicative to me of some kind of delusional rot. “My team worked SO hard every single day to Change The World, the smartest people on the planet Earth, the greatest engineers ever to touch a keyboard, no one has our scale, no one has our problems.” So caught up in their own bullshit that they are like fat, happy hens who don’t se…

This is ridiculous. This is clearly a manager trying his best to soften the blow to his team after they were just fired by talking up their work and impact.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#56

Post by chris_wot »

hulitu wrote: post #4

> Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go A8y "A11y" s4s f1r accesibility. (Apparently "A11y" stands for accesibility). "Twitter is better in the app" is not a sign of "accesibility". Sign in is not a sign of "accesibility".

That actually is the commonly accepted industry term. Like i18n and l10n

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#57

Post by culi »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #44
superb-owl wrote: post #27

This is a real bummer. An app with as wide and diverse a user base as Twitter needs to take accessibility seriously. You can't be the public square if a significant fraction of people are excluded.

We all hate to see people losing their jobs, but it's been known for a very long time that Twitter had an extremely bloated headcount. I'm not at all surprised that something called the "Accessibility Experience Team" was one of the first groups to get cut.

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

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#58

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

izacus wrote: post #47
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all hate to see people losing their jobs, but it's been known for a very long time that Twitter had an extremely bloated headcount. I'm not at all surprised that something called the "Accessibility Experience Team" was one of the first groups to get cut.

Uh... Why?

Because Twitter as-is is a finished product. There's no immediate need to review accessibility issues since there are no new product features/updates for the foreseeable future. Musk froze everything. So what were those people supposed to do? Nothing? Might as well let them move on to new jobs.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#59

Post by exo-pla-net »

fullsend wrote: post #14

The extreme and somehow flowery language in all these posts from Twitter engineers is so indicative to me of some kind of delusional rot. “My team worked SO hard every single day to Change The World, the smartest people on the planet Earth, the greatest engineers ever to touch a keyboard, no one has our scale, no one has our problems.” So caught up in their own bullshit that they are like fat, happy hens who don’t se…

You have so much vitriol toward and schadenfreude over the pain of a person who... helped vision and motion impaired people use Twitter? Yikes.

Re: Twitter’s Entire A11y Experience Team Let Go

#60

Post by decremental »

notamy wrote: post #52
decremental wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly true but I would imagine the team created an internal Bible of all accessibility requirements and that all of that information wasn't siloed in the heads of each employee in that department.

It's a sign of where it's going though. Will the accessibility info be kept up to date? Will the other teams pay attention to it as much if there's not an internal "force" keeping it on people's mind? Will it be considered at a similar level again in the future? The answer to all of these might be "yes," but getting rid of the employees who are most responsible for this doesn't exactly strike me as an act that views…

It might not be a sign of where anything is going. He could just be cleaning house of undesirables. I'm just going to wait and see.
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