{"id":836,"date":"2018-08-07T19:30:01","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T19:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/achangeiscoming.net\/?p=836"},"modified":"2018-08-07T19:30:01","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T19:30:01","slug":"designing-disability-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2018\/08\/07\/designing-disability-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing with disability in mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI have been a blind disabled person for almost 30 years, since I was 17. I personally understand many, not all of course, of the struggles and discrimination that disabled people face. I seek to help empower disabled people and give them a voice. MDM provides a place for disabled people to find information, ask advice, network and debate issues around disability. They will find their community.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Dale Reardon,\u00a0 on mydisabilitymatters.club<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the things I discussed in\u00a0A potential tipping point<\/em><\/a> is that even if most people aren\u2019t ready to #DeleteFacebook, more and more are at a stage where they realize they\u2019re not getting their needs met and looking for something better. Different people have different notions of what\u2019s \u201cbetter\u201d, so we\u2019re not likely to see a single one-size-fits-all solution take Facebook\u2019s place. Instead, we\u2019re likely to see more social networks which focus on communities that are currently being badly underserved in some ways by Facebook.<\/p>\n

Like the disability community, for example.<\/p>\n

Of course, for many disabled people*, Facebook has a lot of value: it\u2019s how they connect to people they know. But loneliness is a huge problem for many disabled people<\/a>, so they\u2019re also interested in meeting people outside their current network. That\u2019s not Facebook\u2019s strength.\u00a0 On top of that, the harassment on Facebook can be vicious\u200a\u2014\u200aespecially for people who are typically marginalized by society.\u00a0 And the point Carmit-Noa Shpigelman and Carol J. Gill make in Facebook Use by Persons with Disabilities<\/a> that Facebook\u2019s problematic privacy defaults \u201ccould harm persons with disabilities, especially intellectual or learning disabilities, who might not know how to \u2026 limit the access to their personal information\u201d is especially important in light of Facebook\u2019s hard-to-navigate and constantly-changing privacy settings – and insurance companies .<\/p>\n

On the other hand, many of the Facebook alternatives I mentioned in A potential tipping point<\/em><\/a> also aren\u2019t great for many disabled people.\u00a0 On Mastodon, for example, @Cassian\u2019s recent informal survey<\/a> found that \u201cpeople who are disabled are much less likely to feel able to contribute to development, and more likely to feel isolated.\u201d So there\u2019s certainly an under-served audience here\u200a\u2014\u200aand one that\u2019s a lot larger than many people realize: roughly 20% of people in the US have a disability<\/a>, and that\u2019s not even counting family, friends, and caregivers.<\/p>\n

\"screenshotMy Disability Matters (MDM) is an empowering and safe online community for those impacted by disability to meet new friends, share experiences, learn and discuss.\u00a0 It\u2019s still small, with just a few thousand users, but clearly has a lot of potential.\u00a0 The current version is a classic \u201cMinimum Viable Product\u201d, with just the minimal functionality that people need, things like photo sharing, groups 1-1 messages, and screen reader support.<\/p>\n

To me (as somebody who thanks to glasses has relatively good eyesight), MDM’s interface looks similar to a lot of other small social networks: kind of like Facebook, albeit less flashy, adequate although not exceptional.\u00a0 But unlike many other small social networks, MDM also works well with screen readers.<\/p>\n

For people who rely on assistive technology, “adequate” is way above the bar they experience in most places.**<\/p>\n

Even though there solid best practices for making web software accessible to people who use screen readers or other accessibility technology, they\u2019re not taught in most university programs or coding boot camps, and most companies don\u2019t actually practice them. In other words, many software projects treat disabled people as an afterthought\u200a\u2014\u200awhich, quite frankly, sucks.<\/p>\n

A lot of startups don’t think about accessibility up front.\u00a0 MDM does, obviously takes a different approach, and one way this shows up is their choice of software platform. A lot of techies in Silicon Valley are somewhat dismissive of WordPress-based web sites, and it\u2019s certainly true that they don\u2019t look as sexy as a hand-crafted user interface using React or whatever the latest Javascript hotness is. But in a classic example of treating disabled people as an afterthought, React tutorials and sample projects almost completely ignore accessibility\u200a\u2014\u200aso hand-crafted UIs lead to hotness for some, no access at all for others.<\/p>\n

The WordPress community, by contrast, has put a lot of work into making their software accessible. It\u2019s far from perfect, but for somebody like Dale with a lot of WordPress accessibility experience, it can be a very good platform. So by building on a reliable and highly scalable WordPress platform, MDM is able to deliver basic functionality equally to everybody from the beginning.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Just as important as accessibility, though, is a focus on of creating a positive, safe, and respectful environment. MDM\u2019s respect pledge<\/a> sets the tone for the site:<\/p>\n

By joining this community, and participating in any way, you commit to treat all fellow members of this community, regardless of race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age, with respect, tolerance, empathy and without judgment or bias.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By contrast, Twitter and Reddit didn\u2019t pay attention to safety and respect up front\u2014 and as a result created toxic cultures that are now deeply entrenched.\u00a0 Facebook isn’t much better; their policies have some major problems, and the process is arbitrary and impersonal.\u00a0\u00a0 Recently, in response to public pressure, the big companies are saying that they’ll improve things … then again, they’ve said it before, and haven’t made any progress.<\/p>\n

Something I really want to highlight here is that keeping the disability perspective in mind leads to solutions that are better for lots of other people as well<\/strong>. It\u2019s not just the disability community that cares about respect and tolerane; as I wrote in Lessons from Mastodon for Independent Social Networks<\/a>, \u201can explicit anti-harassment focus will attract a lot of people who are tired of the normalized harassment on other social networks.\u201d O.school Andrea Barrica makes the business case for this in Ignoring Online Abuse is Bad for Business. Let\u2019s Build Safer Spaces<\/a>.***<\/p>\n

MDM\u2019s approach here is also a good example of the importance of setting intention<\/em>, something Tammarrian Rogers and I talked about in Supporting diversity with a new approach to software<\/a>. You can find lots of other examples of this approach (including various codes of conduct) on the Open Source Bridge wiki<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A few final thoughts<\/h1>\n

From a software engineering perspective, MDM treats accessibility as just as important a consideration as other priorities like functionality, scalability, and security. There are major advantages to taking this approach up front \u2014making your software more testable, for example, and minimizing the amount of \u201ctechnical debt\u201d you\u2019re accumulating. And from a community perspective, it\u2019s the only way to ensure that disabled people can get involved as equals from the very beginning.<\/p>\n

MDM also embodies one of the principles of the disability rights movement: Nothing About Us Without Us<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0It’s software that’s built by people from the disability community for the disability community. That\u2019s a good thing from the software engineering perspective: people who have first-hand lived experience with a community\u2019s challenges are more likely to create solutions that actually work in practice. And it\u2019s also important from a strategic perspective, because it means that from the very beginning, the jobs, skills, and opportunities that are getting created are helping to empower the community.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot to learn from MDM for anybody building social software.\u00a0 Sure, with their focus and Dale’s background, it’s obvious that they need to keep disability perspectives in mind.\u00a0 But if you think about it, these perspectives are just as important for any social software that doesn’t want to exclude disabled people or treat them as afterthoughts.<\/p>\n

Like I said earlier, My Disability Matters is still at an early stage.\u00a0 Building a successful social network is hard.\u00a0 Funding makes it easier, of course; but historically investors have tended to underestimate the size and value of pretty much any audience other than affluent able-bodied white people.\u00a0 [How many disability-focused startups can you name off the top of your head?]\u00a0 More positively, though, MDM’s solving a real problem — one that Facebook is ignoring — for a suprisingly large market; and Dale’s already shown he can deliver enough functionality to get things going.\u00a0 So I’m looking forward to seeing where things go from here!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

* see s.e. smith\u2019s Why I Say \u2018Disabled Person\u2019 Instead of \u2018Person With Disabilities\u2019<\/a> for why I personally tend to use identity-first language.<\/p>\n

** of course there are exceptions.\u00a0 Dreamwidth, for example, has consistently prioritized accessibility.<\/p>\n

*** once again, Dreamwidth is an excellent role model here, in multiple ways: their Diversity Statement<\/a>; functionality like support for group-specific community guidelines, rich (and accessible!) moderation and privacy controls, and theming support; and their 10-year record of success as an inclusive social network.<\/p>\n

 \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tLearning from My Disability Matters\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[420],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}