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> So you're saying people people with accessibility needs are an afterthought, at best? This is such a comical strawman of what I wrote but I'll try to clarify

by belval 3y ago

> So you're saying people people with accessibility needs are an afterthought, at best? This is such a comical strawman of what I wrote but I'll try to clarify nonetheless. Say you have a startup that wants to disrupt inventory management, your secret sauce "idea" is a feature that allows you to cut stale inventory by 14% by implementing various just-in-time workflows that optimize shipping and reception of new goods. If you are in the US (or most English-speaking countries but considering how combative you are let's say US), your MVP should be the most barebone system that you can ship that will give your customers that 14% reduction and make them want to sign a contract with you. Having a screen-reader-compatible interface might be a must ~1 year down the line when you reach a scale where conforming to ADA is a necessity or realistically when your customers ask for it because of the ADA. It's not about caring or not, it's about assigning your meager startup resources towards the features that the prospective customer will say "yes we want your product". That's what an MVP is. In addition (and perhaps even more importantly), MVPs are useful in determining your product-market fit. You might go over 5 or even 10 MVPs as you pivot and refine your inventory management idea, all without having a single customer keeping the lights on. You could implement accessibility in all of them, or you could implement it only in the version that actually gets adopted by a customer.

cratermoon 3y ago
> the prospective customer Yes, all this is just a roundabout way of viewing the prospective customer as a narrow slice of people, the ones who happen to conform to a specific set of ideas about what 'normal' means. If the prospective customer happens to be remarkably similar to the startup founder, perhaps it says more about the attitudes of what constitutes a viable market than it does about really developing a useful product. It reflects a certain homogeneity of ideas about 'prospective customer', and reinforces a homogeneity of options.
- belval 3y ago
  Not really though. If you are building a product for a market where a portion of your targeted user base will need that feature then suddenly your MVP needs to include those assessibility features from day 1 because it's part of the minimum set of features that make your product viable. For example say your startup is targeting long-term homes as a market for a new app that help residents track activities within the facilities, your app will need to be accessible as a significant portion of your user base might have trouble with technology or difficulty reading small text on a smartphone. In that situation you need to have accessibility at the top of your checklist because it's part of the minimum to make your product viable. In many ways it might even be how you displace whatever the organizers were using previously, as you beat your competition by providing a better fit for their userbase.

by belval 3y ago

cratermoon 3y ago

> the prospective customer Yes, all this is just a roundabout way of viewing the prospective customer as a narrow slice of people, the ones who happen to conform to a specific set of ideas about what 'normal' means. If the prospective customer happens to be remarkably similar to the startup founder, perhaps it says more about the attitudes of what constitutes a viable market than it does about really developing a useful product. It reflects a certain homogeneity of ideas about 'prospective customer', and reinforces a homogeneity of options.

belval 3y ago
Not really though. If you are building a product for a market where a portion of your targeted user base will need that feature then suddenly your MVP needs to include those assessibility features from day 1 because it's part of the minimum set of features that make your product viable. For example say your startup is targeting long-term homes as a market for a new app that help residents track activities within the facilities, your app will need to be accessible as a significant portion of your user base might have trouble with technology or difficulty reading small text on a smartphone. In that situation you need to have accessibility at the top of your checklist because it's part of the minimum to make your product viable. In many ways it might even be how you displace whatever the organizers were using previously, as you beat your competition by providing a better fit for their userbase.