6 ms·

As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision to eliminate the accessibility team. I am myself moving to Mastodon. I was amazed in doing

As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision to eliminate the accessibility team. I am myself moving to Mastodon. I was amazed in doing this that the UI/UX of Mastodon is much better than Twitter. I feel better.

vorticalbox 4y ago
there could be a number of reasons other than "Elon doesn't care about xyz" other members of the dev team can/are already doing this Maybe he plans to make it part of everyone's job Maybe he has his own team to replace it We have zero knowledge of what's going to happen so jumping ship without knowing the full picture seems haphazard to me.
- mechanical_bear 4y ago
  Jumping ship because of X at this point is just ideological flexing, we have zero indication how this will play out yet.
  - klabb3 4y ago
    I wouldn't go that far. I agree that there's a lot of that visible right now, but Elon demanded round-the-clock hours from employees as his first "executive order", as well as locking down offices. He just doesn't seem that good of a boss, and more like a traditional capitalist in a sense. Is it ideological to want decent working hours?
  - tchaffee 4y ago
    > we have zero indication. That's a gross mismanagement of sweeping changes. Which is in itself an indication. Anyone could have predicted people leaving the platform if they were told ahead of time how the layoffs and extra hours would be so poorly communicated.
- tchaffee 4y ago
  > we have zero knowledge So a grossly mismanaged change from a PR perspective. Of course there is going to be fallout from that.
NZ_Matt 4y ago
One could argue the accessibility team wasn't doing a very good job if Mastodon have done it better without a dedicated team. An application can and should have good accessibility by default without a dedicated team
- szundi 4y ago
  This. Even before Musk arrived there was a lot of debate about Twitter being overstaffed and departments are not producing any value at all. I don't know more or the details, but this is what sometimes I was reading years back.
  - causi 4y ago
    That's the baffling thing to me. For the better part of a decade people have talked about Twitter being an overstaffed pack of idiots whose day to day largely consists of presiding over the fall of Western civilization. Now that they've been purchased by a jackass, however, they're suddenly a bunch of saints who've only been doing their best to hold back the tides of barbarism. I get the feeling that someone less of an asshole and more ideologically-aligned to the commentators could do the exact same housecleaning Musk is doing and they'd be cheering him on.
    - nootropicat 4y ago
      Hating Elon is in vogue now, anything else is irrelevant.
      - tchaffee 4y ago
        By your reasoning hating on Kevin Spacey is also in vogue. It's probably not in vogue. It's more likely that his own words and actions are resulting in lots of people not liking him. Imagine that. A world where your own words and actions have consequences.
        concordDance 4y ago
matusp 4y ago
Did eliminating the accessibility team made the twitter worse for blind people somehow? Was twitter getting better for blind people over the years?
- thinkingemote 4y ago
  In terms of web accessibility, it had improved the alt text / meta descriptions, etc of external websites through the "cards" when you share a page on twitter, over the years, encouraging web developers to put them in their own websites. (same with faceboook etc)
  - klohto 4y ago
    Twitter just followed what everyone else was doing, and not even correctly, they had to have their own way. FB was among the first social sites crawling the links and creating a thumbnail with crucial info. When OG tags were introduced (by them nonetheless!), FB started honoring them. Twitter some year later finally decided to do the card thing and thought that skipping OG and having their own syntax under meta would be best way.
exodust 4y ago
What would a team of "accessibility engineers" occupy themselves with every day anyway? Did they build features that will fail unless someone is there to handhold? "Day 2: still accessible? check. Day 3: still accessible? check.".... Accessibility is important, but once you build a wheelchair ramp into a building, the ramp builders have nothing more to do. Likewise, Twitter remains fairly static, with only minor changes over the years. > As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision... So you could stomach the decision if you didn't have a blind father? That's not how shared values of accessibility should work - the care factor depending on who you know.
- thinkingemote 4y ago
  It most likely needs a smaller team than they used to have, but some dedicated employees are necessary. Accessibility should be part of every design team. Any new features being developed need accessibility input. This includes all the different mobile apps and integrations with native accessible platforms and accessibility tools. It also needs full internationalisation and language support too, which increases complexity. It needs a few more people than just ticking boxes or building workarounds or ramps after a feature has been developed. Additionally, Twitter also takes in external links from webpages and so can influence the meta markup of these via their API / open graph / social sharing. So it works on the wider web accessibility standards too. I imagine bootstrap and all the other libraries twitter publishes are also part of the teams remit.
  - exodust 4y ago
    > "Accessibility should be part of every design team" Yes but that doesn't mean dedicated people. Accessibility knowledge is already well understood by designers and developers, particularly at the big end of town. The previous team would have presumably written plenty of documents and guidelines and generally fostered a culture of thinking about accessibility. No reason why that will disappear. Patterns and best practice methodologies are common in tech, precisely for efficiency reasons. They belong in standards, and shared knowledge - which is better for the industry as a whole. If every small team needed dedicated accessibility staff, the system is BROKEN.
tylersmith 4y ago
How big is the Mastodon accessibility team? I'm having a hard time finding any information about it.
recuter 4y ago
The purge is of the specific individuals of that team not the concept of accessibility itself. Same goes with all these changes, it is a reboot. If anything, you may end up with a higher quality of accessibility (and moderation, spam filtering, whatever) down the line. Or not. Who knows. The current iteration of the company has ossified - not making changes is arguably against the long term interests of your blind father.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

vorticalbox 4y ago

there could be a number of reasons other than "Elon doesn't care about xyz" other members of the dev team can/are already doing this Maybe he plans to make it part of everyone's job Maybe he has his own team to replace it We have zero knowledge of what's going to happen so jumping ship without knowing the full picture seems haphazard to me.

mechanical_bear 4y ago
Jumping ship because of X at this point is just ideological flexing, we have zero indication how this will play out yet.
- klabb3 4y ago
  I wouldn't go that far. I agree that there's a lot of that visible right now, but Elon demanded round-the-clock hours from employees as his first "executive order", as well as locking down offices. He just doesn't seem that good of a boss, and more like a traditional capitalist in a sense. Is it ideological to want decent working hours?
- tchaffee 4y ago
  > we have zero indication. That's a gross mismanagement of sweeping changes. Which is in itself an indication. Anyone could have predicted people leaving the platform if they were told ahead of time how the layoffs and extra hours would be so poorly communicated.
tchaffee 4y ago
> we have zero knowledge So a grossly mismanaged change from a PR perspective. Of course there is going to be fallout from that.

NZ_Matt 4y ago

One could argue the accessibility team wasn't doing a very good job if Mastodon have done it better without a dedicated team. An application can and should have good accessibility by default without a dedicated team

szundi 4y ago
This. Even before Musk arrived there was a lot of debate about Twitter being overstaffed and departments are not producing any value at all. I don't know more or the details, but this is what sometimes I was reading years back.
- causi 4y ago
  That's the baffling thing to me. For the better part of a decade people have talked about Twitter being an overstaffed pack of idiots whose day to day largely consists of presiding over the fall of Western civilization. Now that they've been purchased by a jackass, however, they're suddenly a bunch of saints who've only been doing their best to hold back the tides of barbarism. I get the feeling that someone less of an asshole and more ideologically-aligned to the commentators could do the exact same housecleaning Musk is doing and they'd be cheering him on.
  - nootropicat 4y ago
    Hating Elon is in vogue now, anything else is irrelevant.
    - tchaffee 4y ago
      By your reasoning hating on Kevin Spacey is also in vogue. It's probably not in vogue. It's more likely that his own words and actions are resulting in lots of people not liking him. Imagine that. A world where your own words and actions have consequences.
      - concordDance 4y ago

matusp 4y ago

Did eliminating the accessibility team made the twitter worse for blind people somehow? Was twitter getting better for blind people over the years?

thinkingemote 4y ago
In terms of web accessibility, it had improved the alt text / meta descriptions, etc of external websites through the "cards" when you share a page on twitter, over the years, encouraging web developers to put them in their own websites. (same with faceboook etc)
- klohto 4y ago
  Twitter just followed what everyone else was doing, and not even correctly, they had to have their own way. FB was among the first social sites crawling the links and creating a thumbnail with crucial info. When OG tags were introduced (by them nonetheless!), FB started honoring them. Twitter some year later finally decided to do the card thing and thought that skipping OG and having their own syntax under meta would be best way.

exodust 4y ago

What would a team of "accessibility engineers" occupy themselves with every day anyway? Did they build features that will fail unless someone is there to handhold? "Day 2: still accessible? check. Day 3: still accessible? check.".... Accessibility is important, but once you build a wheelchair ramp into a building, the ramp builders have nothing more to do. Likewise, Twitter remains fairly static, with only minor changes over the years. > As someone who cares for a blind father, I can't stomach the decision... So you could stomach the decision if you didn't have a blind father? That's not how shared values of accessibility should work - the care factor depending on who you know.

thinkingemote 4y ago
It most likely needs a smaller team than they used to have, but some dedicated employees are necessary. Accessibility should be part of every design team. Any new features being developed need accessibility input. This includes all the different mobile apps and integrations with native accessible platforms and accessibility tools. It also needs full internationalisation and language support too, which increases complexity. It needs a few more people than just ticking boxes or building workarounds or ramps after a feature has been developed. Additionally, Twitter also takes in external links from webpages and so can influence the meta markup of these via their API / open graph / social sharing. So it works on the wider web accessibility standards too. I imagine bootstrap and all the other libraries twitter publishes are also part of the teams remit.
- exodust 4y ago
  > "Accessibility should be part of every design team" Yes but that doesn't mean dedicated people. Accessibility knowledge is already well understood by designers and developers, particularly at the big end of town. The previous team would have presumably written plenty of documents and guidelines and generally fostered a culture of thinking about accessibility. No reason why that will disappear. Patterns and best practice methodologies are common in tech, precisely for efficiency reasons. They belong in standards, and shared knowledge - which is better for the industry as a whole. If every small team needed dedicated accessibility staff, the system is BROKEN.

tylersmith 4y ago

How big is the Mastodon accessibility team? I'm having a hard time finding any information about it.

recuter 4y ago

The purge is of the specific individuals of that team not the concept of accessibility itself. Same goes with all these changes, it is a reboot. If anything, you may end up with a higher quality of accessibility (and moderation, spam filtering, whatever) down the line. Or not. Who knows. The current iteration of the company has ossified - not making changes is arguably against the long term interests of your blind father.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]