Notices by Heather Buchel (hbuchel@hachyderm.io)

To the people replying to this that are all "you're describing people that have time for hobbies": I'm going to give some of you the benefit of the doubt that you know nothing about open source software, but to the others that are intentionally missing the point so they can be dismissive in a conversation regarding the inclusiveness of the OS community, you can kindly go fuck yourself.

The amount of incredibly detailed Github issues I've seen where someone has taken the time to do a manual accessibility audit and give suggestions, even to write the expected HTML, but because it's not wrapped up in a PR with proper Typescript and accompanying unit tests and broken down into 5 different components for "potential" reuse it gets no movement. This is why you get no contributors for these things.

So much of the core of tech leaves out Disabled people and that's ultimately why we can't have nice things. It's why everything ends up being just a little bit worse for everyone. It starts there, then it reaches out to other groups of people that aren't overrepresented in tech, then FINALLY to everyone else who all throw up their hands and say "Who could have seen this coming?"

I'm going to rant about open source a little, I am so sorry.

So much of open source favors people that ~ have time ~ That usually means:

- They aren't caretakers (i.e. they don't have children or elder family that have care needs) or can rely on a partner to do all of that in their stead.
- They can work long hours outside of their 9-5 jobs which excludes many Disabled people or those that have chronic pain.
- They already have a high paying job, they have health insurance.

- OR you work for a company that values open source for one reason or another (there are some very cynical reasons you can think of there, obviously, the potential for unpaid labor).

But ultimately, at the root, because we live in this hellscape where people can't have healthcare and it's a race to the bottom for wages, it's incredibly exclusionary to Disabled people or any one who considers themselves a caretaker.

it just feels like we're never going to live up to the baseline that open source needs to actually thrive. I don't see the current landscape of burnt out maintainers, especially those that are unfortunate enough to have very popular libraries with no corporate backing, as succeeding? People need healthcare. People need UBI. They need childcare. They need elder care.

Not saying we should give up on OS, but sometimes I'm overwhelmed at what we're missing.

I think about this a lot when I see maintainers who shrug off accessibility requests as "Well make a pull request! It's open source!"

The very people that are experts that you need contributions from aren't included or welcomed in this community.

Then, throw in the complicated mess that is "modern" javascript or just frontend development in general. You expect people to be experts at accessibility, to have the bandwidth to contribute, AND to navigate that landscape?

I was just thinking about the first apartment we rented in LA and when we were signing the lease on it, the landlord made sure to tell us that he was a lawyer who worked for the DoD so if we didn't pay our rent he could basically make our life hell or whatever.

I can't think of any other service where part of the business is to make sure you feel like shit for using their business.

Landlords will whine about how this is their business, their income, they're offering a service, etc. But then you're never treated like a customer or someone who should be able to demand adequate service for your payments.

Here is my (slightly less unhinged than I expected) musings on the current state of designing for the web.

Generally, I think we lost something when we stopped calling people web designers and forced people to pick a side.

https://heather-buchel.com/blog/2023/10/why-your-web-design-sucks/

You ever meet someone and you just know they are really into AI stuff solving all of our problems? Please never let someone think that sort of thing (about any tech really) about me.

I feel like if I posted this on the other site it would just spawn subtweets like "🙄 wow guess I'm racist now because I like to use X framework"

I need someone who is much better at writing to talk about this intersection of bigotry and ignorance and how it led us to the current state of JS frameworks LOL Even typing that out seems like "wow that's kind of a leap" but then I also watched it happen so, yeah

Like, was it just a cash grab, or was it ALSO a smattering of "hey pipe down with all that talk about inclusivity, that affects what, like 2% of our users, pft also what do you mean performance is better for accessibility, EYEROLL"

I know it seems like I'm just talking about JS frameworks in general, but no one is going to convince me that the conclusion isn't there. I'm really not surprised that the white "Father, husband, React" crowd ignores the voices from those communities and that's largely why we are here, in this state of building things for the web in such a bad way.

'Those who dared speak up were branded "negative" and "haters", no matter how much data they lugged in tow.'

We were also just told we didn't know what we were talking about or didn't know how to write JS enough OR that we didn't work on complex enough applications that warranted needing CSS-IN-JS solutions or going all in on frameworks :) :) :)

https://infrequently.org/2023/02/the-market-for-lemons/

"They also worked behind the scenes to marginalise those who pointed out the disturbing results and extraordinary costs."

This conversation is always much more sinister to me because when I think of the voices who were marginalized it is either people who come from existing marginalized communities in tech (women, Black people, POC) or those who just generally care about making accessibility and inclusivity a foundation of the tech that we build.