![\"\"](\"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2023-09-08/molly-and-patrick-at-tpac.jpg\")
The latest WebAIM Million is a sobering reminder that, at scale, the web is getting more complex faster than it is getting more accessible.
\nThere are a lot of grim numbers in here, but the one that really sticks with me is how many of the same, eminently-fixable issues continue to dominate year after year. Weâre still talking about contrast, missing labels, empty buttons, and missing alt text. In other words, this is not a story about edge cases. Itâs a story about fundamentals.
\n","social_text":"The latest WebAIM Million is not encouraging: more complexity, more ARIA, and more detectable barriers across the top million home pages.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/the-webaim-million-the-2026-report-on-the-accessibility-of-the-top-1000000-home-pages/","external_url":"https://webaim.org/projects/million/","tags":["accessibility","the web","industry"],"date_published":"2026-04-29T12:00:00Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/why-i-m-betting-against-ai-agents-in-2025-despite-building-them-/","title":"đ Why I'm Betting Against AI Agents in 2025 (Despite Building Them)","content_html":"I think itâs really key to understand what AI is good for and where it falls short. Not just in terms of results, but in terms of externalities as well.
\nTo that end, this is a piece worth reading. To me, the golden nugget is this (when discussing who will succeed with AI agents):
\n\n\n","social_text":"On the 20-step problem and the economics of agentic AI.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/why-i-m-betting-against-ai-agents-in-2025-despite-building-them-/","external_url":"https://utkarshkanwat.com/writing/betting-against-agents/","tags":["AI/ML","industry"],"image":"https://utkarshkanwat.com/writing/betting-against-agents/error_compounding_graph.svg","date_published":"2025-08-04T18:51:12Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/complaining-about-designers-fiddling-with-figma-solves-nothing/","title":"âđ» Complaining About Designers Fiddling with Figma Solves Nothing","summary":"Michael F. Buckley posted a somewhat imflamatory piece to the UX Collective blog over on Medium and I had some strong reactions to it I wanted to share.","content_html":"[T]he winners will be teams building constrained, domain-specific tools that use AI for the hard parts while maintaining human control or strict boundaries over critical decisions. Think less âautonomous everythingâ and more âextremely capable assistants with clear boundaries.â
\n
Michael F. Buckley posted a somewhat imflamatory piece to the UX Collective blog over on Medium and I had some strong reactions to it I wanted to share. You should read it first before continuing.
\nFirst off, I agree with his core message: designers should understand the medium they are working in, be it web or an OS-specific UI. Thatâs where my agreements end, however.
\n\n\nThey pat themselves on the back, believing theyâve mastered digital design. Meanwhile, a developer glances at the file, sighs, and codes the button in five minutes.
\n
Condescention toward designers aside, this also assumes a high degree of competency and understanding of nuance on the engineering side which â in my experience â is not guaranteed. I cannot tell you how often Iâve designed an interface that calls for a button to submit a form and I get back a div with a click handler that canât accept focus and has no design considerations for hover, focus, etc. In other words, if I provided a design with a single button on it, I get that button exactly. Sometimes exactly to those explicit dimensions, text overflow be damned.
There needs to be an acknowledgement and appreciation that designers know their craft and (generally) have good reasons for being overly prescriptive. Do some designers stray into realms of self-indulgence⊠absolutely! But so do engineers.
\nI think where we need to get to is a place where handoff provides enough information to inform the engineer of the totality of whatâs needed. Sure, to a seasoned engineer that may seem overly detailed, but to a junior engineer it can be incredibly helpful in learning all of the considerations of something as seemingly simple as a button. And even a seasoned engineer might learn a thing (or three) from annotations regarding accessibility and such. Communication is the key to success here.
\nAlso, some prototyping in a tool like Figma can help with catching issues â like keyboard traps, for instance â before they are codified into code. Making changes in Figma or other design tools is generally a lot cheaper that doing it in code. Back of the napkin math â which is generally agreed upon across the industry â is that catching & fixing an accessibility issue in design costs about $100. In development, itâs like $1,000. If it sneaks into production, itâs gonna be more like $10,000.
\nTo be clear, Iâm not disagreeing with the piece in its entirety â designers should learn their medium (which is coding to a degree but also UX expectations) and Figmaâs not the medium â but I think thereâs more nuance to it. I also dislike the us vs. them framing; weâre all in this together.
\n","social_text":"Michael F. Buckley posted a somewhat imflamatory piece to the UX Collective blog over on Medium and I had some strong reactions to it I wanted to share.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/complaining-about-designers-fiddling-with-figma-solves-nothing/","tags":["design","web development","industry"],"date_published":"2025-03-24T16:11:54Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/on-diversity/","title":"âđ» On Diversity","summary":"Seeing the current U.S. administration taking an axe to DEI programs in the government and bully private businesses to do the same has me incredibly frustrated, confused, and (yes) angry. I want more equality and more opportunity in the world, not less.","content_html":"Iâve been broadly working in the DEI (or DEIA if you like) sphere for decades now. Most of my work has been coming at it from the accessibility side of things, but I got really involved in allyship and more traditional DEI work starting in 2019. Seeing the current U.S. administration taking an axe to DEI programs in the government and bully private businesses to do the same has me incredibly frustrated, confused, and (yes) angry. I want more equality and more opportunity in the world, not less.
\nAnd so, when I was listening to the latest episode of The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, I was struck by how the left and right may actually be more aligned on DEI than the headlines lead us to believe.
\nIn the episode, Stewart was interviewing former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican. When the topic of DEI came up, they got into a discussion of merit vs. diversity in the context of the Secretary of Defense role. Both agreed that, in terms of merit, General Lloyd Austin was a much better hire than Foxâs former weekend host Pete Hegseth. The fact that Austin is also Black has no more impact on his being a better candidate than the fact that Pete Hegseth being White makes him a worse candidate. What Austin does bring to the table, however, is first-hand knowledge of what itâs like to rise up the ranks as a Black soldier. Thatâs a significant knowledge gap when it comes to the U.S. military, whose top brass isnât representative of the diversity of its personnel.
\nThis is something that Christie actually points out when discussing becoming the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey back in 2002:
\n\n\nWhen I got there, I just did a lot of walking around the office to see, okay, whoâs here? Jon, it was the whitest, malest office I had ever been in in my life. And I was coming from private law practice.
\n
He, rightly, saw this as a problem and wanted to address it. He told his staff
\n\n\n[We need] to go out and recruit candidates who are African-American, Latino, Asian, women. Bring them to me. If theyâre not good, Iâm not going to hire them. But Iâm convinced weâre not seeing them.
\n
His approach to address this was perfectly rational and aligned with the approach Jon had discussed mere moments before:
\n\n\nWhat I found was hiring has a certain inertia to it, right? Generally, the people that started whatever industry or whatever office did, generally hire close to people that resemble them. So Iâm not even talking about White/Black. Iâm talking about like⊠Iâll just go with late-night comedy, right?
\nDavid Letterman revolutionized late-night comedy. He did it with a lot of Harvard, Lampoon, SNL, same way, writers. The comedy writing industry was for a long time â not necessarily out of malevolence or prejudice â the inertia of it, the status quo of it, was nerdy white dudes from Harvard and the other Ivy Leagues.
\nBut even when we went to like, âOh, weâre going to do blind submissions,â what we didnât realize is all the agents are also steeped in that same status quo. So all the resumes â even when we would get them â still predominantly [trails off]. When we went specifically to say â now, this is what you would consider DEI â âGive us not that. Open it up to make sure you give us women, people of color, other writers, so that we can at least see what that is.â And all of a sudden, we found these incredible writers. Now, you could say, âOh, you put diversity over competence,â but thatâs the red herring. We didnât. We opened up what were stagnant pools. Pools that were incestuous. And we opened up those tributaries. Isnât that what increases competition, not decreases it?
\n
Whatâs fascinating here is that they are both making the same point. As Christie says later
\n\n\nWe then went about this process of hiring a large number of African-American, Latino, and Asian prosecutors, but I would tell you that every one of them checked both boxes. They checked the box of, âthey now look more like the community we represent than we did before.â And these are really good lawyers.
\n
So these two men from very different political viewpoints totally agree on the importance of representation. So whereâs the issue?
\nWhen Stewart highlighted how aligned their two perspectives were and Christie pushed back, stating that DEI policies were problematic:
\n\n\nI think there have been a number of areas where there are people who hire certain folks just for their diversity. Iâve seen it happen here in New Jersey, in the government since I left. Where people say, âI am going to make sure that I have one of everyâŠâ Itâs almost like a half a Noahâs Ark. âIâm going to have one of these and one of these and one one of these and one of these.â
\n
Stewart questioned that:
\n\n\nBut you just told me thatâs what you did in the prosecutorâs office.
\n
But Christie didnât see it that way:
\n\n\nNo, what I did was get them in to interview them. If it turned out, Jon, that they were also really good lawyers, they got hired. Iâm talking about something different. Iâm talking about predetermining the outcome in the way that you just talked about â and I believe that legacy admissions predetermined the outcome â that there have been some in charge of government across this country who have predetermined determined outcomes and said, âI am going to have this many African-Americans, this many Latinos, this many Asians, this many lesbians, this many gay menâŠâ I think that when people see that, they say to themselves, âThatâs not right either.â
\n
What heâs talking about is what Iâd call performative DEI. Itâs not substantive, but attempts to give off the appearance of being so. Itâs the DEI equivalent of greenwashing.
\nWhen people hire folks or celebrate folks for their diversity rather than their diversity plus their competence or talents, it undermines the legitimacy of DEI programs that are attempting to do what they both discussed being important: representation.
\nAs they both said, we need to screen in job applicants who wouldnât otherwise consider applying for roles in our organizations. Christie talked about this too:
\n\n\nThe aha moment for me on that concept and why it was the right way to go was there was a young guy that I hired very early on: African-American, University of Michigan, University of Penn Law School, clerk for Alan Page â the former Minnesota Viking, defensive tackle in the Supreme Court of Minnesotaâ Heâs from New Jersey, grew up in Maplewood. I said to him, âWhy didnât you ever apply here before?â He said, âBecause I knew people like me wouldnât get hired.â
\n
Hiring is just part of the process though. You can widen the applicant funnel and bring in a more representative â which is to say diverse â applicant pool with relatively little effort. Where things often fall short is retention.
\nIf your organization isnât excited at the prospect of a more diverse workforce and prepared to support them when they are onboarded, you need to press pause and get prepared. Similarly, if your company is eager, but very homogenous, youâve also got work to do. No one wants to come into a job and feel like âthe onlyâ or âthe tokenâ anything. And even if they were the most qualified applicant for the position, some jackass will say something that implies they are. Itâs a tale as old as time and you need to be prepared for that reality.
\nThe first thing you need to do is educate. You need to help folks on your team understand the gaps in your collective knowledge & experience. They need to see that a more diverse team can help fill those gaps. The data that shows that more diverse organizations are more successful. Share that! Iâm guessing most of your team is there because they want your organization to be as successful as possible.
\nAnd make sure they understand the historical barriers folks from different communities have faced in getting access to jobs at organizations like yours⊠even when they were equally or more accomplished than folks from the dominant group. As Stewart said on the show:
\n\n\nItâs not rigging [the system] in a different direction, itâs unrigging it.
\n
Itâs also important to note that the process here needs to be inclusive as well⊠call people in, donât call them out. Everyone is on their own journey and deserves the space to fail and learn from their mistakes. If someone says something offensive, let them know that itâs offensive and why. Tell them what they should say â if anything â instead.
\nIf you approach people with empathy, youâre much more likely to get a positive response. And, Twitter aside, most folks arenât out in these streets trying to be trolls. People are a product of their own experiences and those experiences can be quite different from yours. Help your colleagues broaden their perspectives with positive reinforcement, not chastising.
\nThat said, you also need the proper mechanisms in place to address non-inclusive behaviors when they become a pattern or reach a certain threshold of severity. Those mechanisms need to outline the consequences for such behavior. The severity of the consequence needs to align with the severity of the harm, but it may need to escalate in severity for repeat offenses. Depending on the size of your organization, coming up with these policies and consequences could be a group activity to ensure both awareness and buy-in.
\nTo be clear, neither Jon Stewart nor the progressive left are pushing for diversity quotas like Christie seems to think they are. But there are folks out there who are. These performative DEI programs have got to go. As my colleague and friend Ebele Okoli says âbake it in, donât cake it on.â
\nDonât hire or promote someone just because you think their headshot would help to melanate your About page. Thatâs not what DEI is about and it doesnât help us to reverse the dire course the U.S. government and cowardly companies are taking currently. DEI needs to be a part of every process in your organization on order to give everyone â white men like me included â an equal chance to succeed.
\nCast a wide net. Hire and promote for competence and to address the knowledge gaps your team absolutely has. Foster an inclusive workplace that values the different lived experience and perspectives brought to the table by each and every employee. That is how you succeed with DEI. Itâs also how DEI will help your organization succeed in its mission and grow to hire more folks.
\nAnd as more of the incredibly talented people out there get hired on at organizations like yours, all boats will rise, creating more jobs and space for mediocre people of all stripes to get hired and rise up the ranks too. But they wonât get there just because or who they know, what they look like, or because they tick a particular box on your diversity bingo card.
\n","social_text":"Seeing the current U.S. administration taking an axe to DEI programs in the government and bully private businesses to do the same has me incredibly frustrated, confused, and (yes) angry. I want more equality and more opportunity in the world, not less.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/on-diversity/","tags":["equality","inclusion","society","industry","accessibility","empathy"],"date_published":"2025-01-30T23:11:54Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/link-rot-and-digital-decay-on-government-news-and-other-webpages/","title":"đ Link Rot and Digital Decay on Government, News and Other Webpages","content_html":"\n\nA quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, as of October 2023. In most cases, this is because an individual page was deleted or removed on an otherwise functional website.
\n
Linkrot, especially in government and legal scenarios, is a tremendous problem, which is why we need services like the Internet Archive and Perma.cc. If you have the means, please consider supporting these, and similar, projects!
\n","social_text":"Linkrot, especially in government and legal scenarios, is a tremendous problem, which is why we need services like the @InternetArchive and @PermaCC.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/link-rot-and-digital-decay-on-government-news-and-other-webpages/","external_url":"https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/","tags":["the web","industry","URLs"],"date_published":"2024-05-24T16:23:56Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/the-quiet-pervasive-devaluation-of-frontend/","title":"đ The quiet, pervasive devaluation of frontend","content_html":"While not exactly novel, this post from Josh Collinsworth is a fantastic meditation on devaluation of front-end engineering work.
\n\n\nWriting CSS seems to be regarded much like taking notes in a meeting, complete with the implicit sexism and devaluation of the note takerâs importance in the room.
\nThough critical to the project, frontend work will quite often be disregarded by those who consider it beneath them (usually men, and usually only tacitly, never explicitly). Itâs not serious enough; not important enough; not real enough. Too squishy. Like soft skills.
\nYes, of course, itâs important. Itâs work that somebody needs to do, certainly. But probably not the important people, whose valuable attention is focused on other, bigger, more important problems.
\n
Itâs been this way for a long time. This attitude doesnât exist on every team, but itâs pervasive throughout our industry.
\n","social_text":"While not exactly novel, this post from Josh Collinsworth is a fantastic meditation on devaluation of front-end engineering work.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/the-quiet-pervasive-devaluation-of-frontend/","external_url":"https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/devaluing-frontend","tags":["industry","web design"],"date_published":"2024-03-20T23:07:35Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/acessibilidade-o-verdadeiro-diferencial-dos-livros-digitais/","title":"đ Acessibilidade: O verdadeiro diferencial dos livros digitais","content_html":"Itâs nice to see folks in the digital book space beginning to embrace the potential of their medium:
\n\n\n","social_text":"It's nice to see folks in the digital book space beginning to embrace the potential of their medium. (Original link in Brazilian Portuguese.)","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/acessibilidade-o-verdadeiro-diferencial-dos-livros-digitais/","external_url":"https://www.publishnews.com.br/materias/2023/12/18/acessibilidade-o-verdadeiro-diferencial-dos-livros-digitais","tags":["HTML","industry"],"image":"https://www.publishnews.com.br/estaticos/uploads/2023/12/NUnd53uTzgmyUSR0kQga1npwoiqlCK29dSDnFDRcdah5OQypkRpt8bYhzbjWxmDGF3E4PcPUAPnV4Mb4.jpg","date_published":"2024-01-06T05:06:26Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/microsoft-announces-new-copilot-copyright-commitment-for-customers/","title":"đ Microsoft announces new Copilot Copyright Commitment for customers","content_html":"Para abraçar verdadeiramente o potencial do digital, Ă© essencial adotar uma mentalidade âdigital firstâ. Isso significa que o conteĂșdo digital nĂŁo deve ser uma simples transposição do impresso, mas sim algo que aproveita ao mĂĄximo as funcionalidades Ășnicas do meio digital.
\n
While I really appreciate Microsoft standing behind the AI itâs deploying, I do wonder how this squares with the U.S. Copyright Officeâs ruling that prompt-generated content isnât copyrightable.
\n","social_text":"I canât help but wonder how this squares with AI-generated content not being copyrightable.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/microsoft-announces-new-copilot-copyright-commitment-for-customers/","external_url":"https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2023/09/07/copilot-copyright-commitment-ai-legal-concerns/","tags":["AI/ML","industry"],"image":"https://blogs.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/5/2023/09/CLO22_HumanBuiltAbstracts_020-1024x683.jpg","date_published":"2023-09-22T20:00:40Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/remembering-molly/","title":"âđ» Remembering Molly","summary":"We lost a seminal figure in the world of web design this week. And I lost a good friend and mentor. RIP Molly Holzschlag.","content_html":"We lost a seminal figure in the world of web design this week. And I lost a good friend and mentor. Molly Holzschlag cared deeply for the web and those of us who till its soils.
\nThis is a tough post to write, to be honest. Itâs difficult to articulate just how influential Molly has been on my own work, my philosophical approach to web design, and my career.
\n
Molly was there when I gave my first talk. 2003. COMDEX. Iâd been invited out by the World Organization of Webmasters to give a talk on XHTML. The talk was solid. My delivery was atrocious. Molly was quick to come up after and congratulate me. I was floored.
\nI told her how excited I was to see her and Eric Meyer give a talk on CSS later in the day. She told me Eric had had to cancel his trip last minute and asked me if I would be interested in giving the talk with her. Just like that. I donât know that she had any idea who I was (Iâd only just published my first piece in A List Apart a few months earlier). But that was how Molly rolled. She saw my passion for web standards and somehow knew Iâd be able to step up.
\nThat one welcoming gesture was huge for me. And it was the start of a long collaboration and friendship. After that talk, we met up in Vegas again in 2004 and then went on a speaking tour the U.S. together in 2005, running web standards workshops where we taught people the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and accessibility. I learned so much from her during that time and bore witness, over and over, to her immense capacity for welcoming people, bringing them together, breaking bread, building her tribe⊠she was the very embodiment of the word hospitable.
\nAnd gregarious. Her boisterous laugh was infectious and memorable. I can still hear it echoing in my ears.
\n![\"Me](\"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2023-09-08/aaron-and-molly.jpg\")
I donât know that Iâve ever met someone who gave as much of herself as Molly did. She always, always put others first, sometimes to her own detriment.
\nWhen I first met Molly, she was leading the Web Standards Project (WaSP). She poured her heart and soul into that organization and the cause of web standards. I lost count of how many events she spoke at, often on her own dime. She invited educators into her home to teach them how to properly teach the next generation of web designers and developers⊠for free.
\nShe always put her advocacy for the cause first⊠a double edged sword weâve since named advocacy fatigue. It took a toll on herâmentally, physically, and spirituallyâand she took the occasional break from it, but she never gave up on the fight for a more egalitarian web.
\n![\"In](\"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2023-09-08/working-on-slides.jpg\")
Another aspect of Mollyâs giving nature was her insistence on opening doors for people, career-wise. I witnessed her pass along amazing opportunities that found their way into her inbox with an incredible amount of joy. Like doling out incredible gifts for a holiday.
\nOne such gift she handed me was the opportunity to do some work with Adaptive Path. Through her introduction, I got the chance to work with an amazing team on several projects⊠all from my living room thousands of miles from their San Francisco offices. That was the kind of sway she pulled.
\nThat work led to a part-time role (and health insurance) at Bolt|Peters, where I worked on Ethnio. That role gave me the freedom to quit my day job at an ad agency and begin building my own consulting business, which I launched a few months later and ran for over a decade.
\nAll because of the doors Molly opened.
\nIn a separate path, she invited me to join WaSP, where I worked on a lot of JavaScript-focused efforts. That led to me working with Microsoft on improvements to IE7 and IE8 andâyears laterâto me eventually joining Microsoft as a web standards advocate.
\nAll because of the doors Molly opened.
\nAnd I was not alone. Wherever and whenever Molly saw an opportunity to help someone on their career journey, she would help them. Book contracts. Speaking engagements. Networking. Freelance work. If Molly saw any way she could help you, she did. No ego. No expectations. Selfless.
\nHer example is what inspired me to build my mentoring program. I donât know that I can ever do as much good as she did for people, but she made me want to try.
\n![\"In](\"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2023-09-08/molly-training.jpg\")
If you know Mollyâs name, this is probably why. She was a staunchâand loudâadvocate for web standards and accessibility. A veteran of the browser wars (and subsequent skirmishes), she knew the landscape and she knew how imperative it was for standards to emerge and for browsers to implement them consistently.
\nI wasnât there for the meeting, but she told me Bill Gates tried to tell her the web was âdoneâ âround about the IE6 days and she yelled at him. While she wasnât one to shy away from the occasional embellishment, she was just as unlikely to shy away from a confrontation over the viability and future of the web⊠so it would not surprise me at all to hear that sheâd yelled at him.
\nMolly was a lionessânurturing and maternal to the web and its denizens and a fierce protector when they were threatened. She saw the potential of the web as a great equalizer and bristled when folks would try to wall it off or exclude peopleâespecially disempowered peopleâfrom accessing it.
\nThat passionate support for the open web never wavered, even when Molly became ill. In fact weâd been talking about whether it might make sense to re-launch WaSP this year, a decade after weâd shuttered it because we thought the work was doneâit wasnât.
\n![\"In](\"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2023-09-08/molly-presenting.jpg\")
Knowing Molly affected me. Deeply. Her kindness, thoughtfulness, generosity, and passion live on in everyone her life and work touched. Including me.
\nI donât know what to make of a world without Molly, but I hate that weâre living in one. She truly was a force of nature and, as such, has left an indelible mark on this industry.
\nIâm so thankful to have known her. To have received her mentorship. To have called her a friend.
\nGoodnight Mols. I love you.
\nMore on front-end.social by following #MollyHolzschlag.
\nKnow of others? Please share them.
\n","social_text":"We lost a seminal figure in the world of web design this week. And I lost a good friend and mentor. RIP Molly Holzschlag.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/remembering-molly/","tags":["influences","career","personal","industry","the web"],"image":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2023-09-08/molly-taking-pictures.jpg","date_published":"2023-09-08T18:14:31Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/accessibility-beyond-code-compliance/","title":"âđ» Accessibility Beyond Code Compliance","summary":"This is a (rough) transcript of my talk for axe-con 2023. In it, I provide examples of other areas of our industry that can benefit from developersâ accessibility skills and knowledge.","content_html":"I had the great pleasure of delivering a talk about career opportunities for accessibility devs at axe-con earlier today. You can view the slides or watch the recording of this talk, but what follows is an approximation my talkâs content, taken from my notes and slides.
\nGood morning, good afternoon, and good evening to you, wherever you are in the world. My name is Aaron Gustafson. My pronouns he, him, and his. I am a middle-aged white man with long, wavy hair, glasses, and a red and grey beard my wife refers to as âsalt & paprika.â I am speaking to you from Seattle, WA on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish peoples, most notably the Duwamish, whose longhouse is not too far from my home.
\nSome of you may be familiar with my work. Iâve been a web designer and developer since the mid â90s. In that time Iâve authored dozens of articles and a few books and given over a hundred talks on web development. In fact, if my math is correct, I believe this is my 150th talk.
\nOver the years Iâve been best known for my work in progressive enhancement and accessibility, but I also led the Web Standards Project back in the day and am the Editor in Chief of A List Apart.
\nI have deep roots in the web dev community, particularly in the accessibility space, but thatâs not why Iâm here today. Iâm here today because about 9 months ago I decided to change things up and use my accessibility skills in other ways.
\nIn my case, I joined the Microsoft Accessibility Innovation team to lead our investments through the AI for Accessibility grant program.\nBut Iâm not here to talk about AI, Iâm here to talk about how you can put your accessibility skills to work, beyond finding and remediating accessibility bugs.
\nIn my career, Iâve found itâs really easy to get typecast or pigeon-holed when youâre a developer whose focus is accessibility. This is a bit of a cruel irony as many of us are driven by a desire to tear down the barriers to access for others.
\nOur companies, organizations, and sometimes even our colleagues put us in a box. They donât seem to realize that knowledge of how to make products accessible has huge value beyond compliance (and avoiding lawsuits). In our careers, we might be able to level up from a junior to senior role or even make it to principal, based on our performance, but growth beyond that is often limited to moving into people management, which is a wholly different skill set. And maybe thatâs your aspiration⊠thatâs totally cool if it is, but what if you want to grow as an independent contributor?
\nWhen our organizations put us in a box, they make it really difficult to grow our scope and increase the impact we can have for both the organization and the people we serve.
\nDonât get me wrong, I love compliance work. Iâm not here to disparage it in any way; itâs critically important and means so much to our customers. But after years in this industry, I also see the downsides of life in the âaccessibility devâ box. Perhaps you relate to a few of these:
\nAgain, I am not trying to cast code compliance work in a bad light, and Iâm not trying to get you down on it. What I want to do is build you up.
\nI believe you, as a developer interested in accessibility, have so much to offer your organizations, your customers, and this industry. Thatâs what I am here to talk to you about today.
\nIâm here to talk to you about opportunity!
\nWhen I was doing this work on the regular, I struggled to see how I could grow my impact. In the intervening years, however, Iâve discovered a bunch of ways we can bring our knowledge and passion for accessibility to other areas of both web development and the tech industry overall.
\nAs I mentioned, Iâve been in this industry and held a lot of different roles since the mid â90s. Iâve held just about every web-related role you could name. Iâve been an educator, publisher, spec editor at the W3C. Iâve worked in Developer Relations and strategic roles. Iâve worn an awful lot of hats (which is totally fine with me as my hair is thinning in the back).
\nAll of this is to say that Iâve seen and experienced a lot of ways you can be valuable to your current employer or, perhaps, a future one.\nI am going to share 5 of them with you today:
\nThese are by no means your only options and, as I mentioned, if youâre happy with what youâre doing, please donât consider this talk a nudge to get you to change things up. I just want to make you aware of the value you can bring to other kinds of roles, some of which you may not have considered before.
\nAlso: I want to make it clear that I am not advocating that you take on any of these responsibilities in addition to your current work. Far too often, organizations ask those of us with accessibility skills to do things beyond our job description without any additional compensation for that work. Please donât fall into that trap as it will lead to burnout.
\nIf youâre really interested in software development, an area that keeps you in that area is working on design systems.
\nIâm not going to go deep on design systemsâthere are a bunch of talks and even whole conferences focused on that topicâbut I will give you the Cliffs Notes if youâre unfamiliar: Design systems (and pattern libraries within them) codify your organizationâs design and coding guidelines in such a way that the software you produce is consistent and the teams working on delivering that software are able to be more efficient because they arenât having to design and build every interface from scratch.\nHaving a design system that is accessible enables teams to avoid introducing new accessibility bugs in the process of creating bespoke interfaces. It also means finding and fixing an accessibility bug in the design system should fix it in all of the products using that design system. (That last part isnât always perfect, but I donât have time to get into that today.)
\nIf you work in a small organization, itâs possible that you arenât working with a design system yet. Knowing what you do about their accessibility benefits, you could advocate for the creation of one and for its creating, care & maintenance to be your job.
\nIn this role, you can:
\nIf youâre in a larger organization that already has a design system, you could be a bit more strategic in your approach:
\nAs an accessibility dev, your unique perspective and skills will help build greater alignment on accessibility among teams and improve morale by speeding up development & reducing bugs!
\nAs I mentioned, the role in larger orgs can be more strategic. Another strategic role is shaping the products that we build, as a product designer, product owner, product manager, or similar. (Different companies have different titles for this kind of work.)
\nIn this kind of a role, we can put the âshift leftâ credo we advocate for regularly into practice. It involves
\nAll of this work has huge business value for your organization:
\nOn that last point, I often point to WhatsApp as a perfect example of this. When they launched, there were nearly 8,000 chat apps in the iOS App Store. If theyâd only offered their app to that audience, they would not have found the level of success they did because the competition was so high. They expanded their potential customer base by supporting OSes others were ignoring: older Android versions, Blackberry, Symbian, Nokia Series 40, Windows Phone. Some of those werenât even smartphone OSes! When WhatsApp sold to Facebook for $19B, they had over 600M users worldwide because they made their product accessibleâin a broader senseâto more people.
\nBy considering accessibility in the same way as WhatsApp considered OS support, we can growâor to think about it another way, stop artificially suppressingâour customer base and succeed where our competition fails.
\nAs an accessibility dev, your unique perspective and skills will ensure your company ships higher quality products, with fewer bugs, for less money!
\nMoving a bit further afield, I want to talk about how much we need your skills in the world of data science. As part of a data science team, you could bring attention to accessibility in our product metrics by
\nApart from products, you could also have a profound impact on your organizationsâ internal processes, especially around how compliance work is done and tracked:
\nAnd if you wanted to keep working in the UI space, you could put your skills to work improving the quality of the dashboards and tools used by your company:
\nThis is incredibly necessary work as we often neglect the accessibility of our own internal tools.
\nAs an accessibility dev, your unique perspective and skills can help your company make decisions that result in more inclusive and accessible products that provide a better user experience (and may even increase revenue).
\nThe fourth area desperately in need of your skills and perspective is AI research and ethics. AI is a hot topic right now, for sure, and it absolutely has the potential to meaningfully improve peopleâs lives, including those of people with disabilities, but to get there, organizations need your help!
\nYou have the knowledge and connections in this space to harness the power of AI in service of people with disabilities.
\nAs part of an AI research team you canâŠ
\nThis is the space Iâm very grateful to be in right now. As part of the Accessibility Innovation team at Microsoft, I get to identify and fund projects that are using AI to improve the lives of people with disabilities.
\nFor example: the ORBIT project. Thereâs been lots of work in the object detection space, but there is a lot of focus on labelling âhigh-qualityâ images. This doesnât really help folks in the real world. A blind person, for instance, is likely to have a hard time providing the image recognizer a with a perfectly-framed, perfectly focused capture of an object they need identified.
\nThe Orbit project, from the City University of London, worked to enable âfew-shot learningâ of novel objects by training the model on brief videos taken by blind & low vision collectors. These videos are âimperfectâ in that they are likely to be poorly framed, blurry, and so on.\nThis increases the noise-to-signal ratio, which is actually a good thing in training a machine learning model. Enabling AI systems to recognize objects captured in imprecise ways makes for a more robust recognizer that is capable of identifying objects in less than ideal contexts.\nThat, in turn, improves the overall quality of these systems for everyone.
\nAnother example is Mentra, who has been using AI to help pair neurodivergent folks with employers who recognize the profound contributions they can make in their companies. Mentraâs platform collects holistic data on job seekers:
\nIt takes these into account when matching individuals to available positions (which also include comparable information).
\nMentra takes care not to âscreen outâ individuals with non-traditional backgrounds. It also works in a âreverse job fairâ model, where applicants only fill in one profile, letting Mentraâs AI recommend them for jobs that are a good fit. Employers indicate their interest and invite job seekers to interview, lessening the stress level on the job seeker.
\nMentraâs straightforward approach also reduces the need for job seekers to âcoverâ in a new role as theyâve made it clear what accommodations they need in order to be successful.
\nThe third project Iâll share with you is iWill, who are working in the mental health space.
\nThere are tons of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) chatbots out there, but we were really intrigued by work being undertaken by iWill in India. First of all, there is a profound scarcity of mental health professionals in India. Training and deploying enough professionals to meet the mental health needs of the population is not feasible in the near term, which is why chat bots are a compelling stop-gap.
\nMost CBT chatbots are trained in English. We are funding them to train a CBT model end-to-end in Hindi as we believe itâs the only way to avoid potential problems inherent in translation (Hindi to English for the ML then back again) and biases that would be inherent from the involvement of English.
\nI could spend hours talking about all of the good AI can do in the world, but I also recognize that AI can also perpetuate or exacerbate exclusion.
\nAI teams need your skills to help them address bias toward and exclusion of people with disabilities. They also need you to be there protecting the privacy of people with disabilities.
\nYou would bring a lot to an AI team in this regard:
\nAs an accessibility dev, your unique perspective and skills can help can ensure advancements in AI/ML are beneficial (and not harmful) to people with disabilities!
\nThe last role Iâll talk about is probably the furthest afield from development, but it also has the most profound impact on the teams that do the work and thatâs D&I. I donât imagine I need to spend a ton of time making a case to this audience for why diversity matters, but hereâs a quick run-down just in case:
\nFor more on those last two points, you should read this piece in the Harvard Business Review.
\nAs someone who is keenly aware of the importance of having diverse teams to build inclusive products, you can do a lot to ensure your organization embraces diversity in its recruiting efforts. Fixing leaks in âthe pipeline,â if you will.
\nA lot of it starts with asking important questions:
\nItâs also important to actively solicit disabled talent for roles in your company.
\nSome of this is actually work you could do without being part of any official D&I team, if you wanted, but if it is something you want to focus on, you might consider a job in recruiting.
\nA lot of folks focus on the pipeline, but in my experience thatâs not where the bulk of the problems lie. If we want diverse teams, we need to ensure we have an environment and culture that values and supports them. Diverse talent will flee an unwelcoming environment and employee churn is expensive.
\nIn order to retain diverse talent, we need to make sure the teams they join recognize the value they bring to an organization. This is where D&I training and coaching comes in.
\nYou can influence team culture to improve retention by framing diversity in the context of your business goals and organizational success:
\nOnce the framing has been established, be sure to âcall inâ non-inclusive/biased behaviors. Leading with curiosity can help you understand where someone is coming from so you can help them grapple with concepts like privilege and bias. Donât burn yourself out trying to change the mind of folks who are openly antagonistic to this message, but youâll often be surprised at how a non-confrontational, nonjudgmental conversation can both diffuse a tense situation and help to shift someoneâs perspectives.
\nAnother step you can take to improve retention include examining the inclusiveness (or lack thereof) of your teamâs processes, built environments, and such. Are your hybrid meetings being monopolized by folks in the physical meeting space, alienating people on the call? Are your team morale events all scheduled in the evenings, making it hard for parents or caregivers on the team? Are they being held in bars, which makes it uncomfortable for folks who donât drink alcohol, or in inaccessible venues?
\nFinally, it can be really beneficial to normalize disability in everyday interactions, especially if you are someone with privilege in your workplace as you can create space for others to acknowledge their own disabilities.
\nI was thankful that my last role enabled me to make this kind of D&I work a formal third of my core responsibilities. With my managementâs backing, I was able to lead D&I trainings and events across the company while still being able to do the other work I love.
\nMany companies have formal D&I teams (some in HR, some not) for whom this is their whole job, so there are certainly opportunities there. That said, those teams often rely on advocacy from elsewhere in the company for their efforts to be successful, so you might also be able to formally support their efforts from outside that organization, as I did.
\nIf there is no room for diverse talent to grow in their careers, many will leave. As I mentioned, churn is expensive. And just as not feeling respected & valued will likely result in a diverse employee leaving, the same goes for not having the same career advancement opportunities enjoyed by people from more privileged groups. Depending on where you are in your organization, you can help address this problem in different ways:
\nThis work is especially important to undertake if you are from a privileged group in your organization as your advocacy carries more weight. Treat your privilege as a currency and spend it on your colleagues.
\nFinally, and in perhaps the most formal way, working full-time in D&I you can shape company policies & trainings:
\nAs an accessibility dev, your unique perspective and skills can help increase the inclusiveness of your company for fellow employees, which will lead to the creation of more inclusive products and services!
\nIn this talk, I introduced five areas desperately in need of your skills and perspectives: Design Systems, Product Design, Data Science, AI Research & Ethics, and Diversity & Inclusion.
\nThere are way more (I only have so much time).
\nIf youâre feeling stuck, hopefully this gives you some idea of the kinds of opportunities that are out there for you. And if you only come away from this session with one thing, let it be this:
\nYou are more valuable than you realize.
\nYou are change maker.
\nThank you!
\n","social_text":"I cobbled together a rough transcript of my #AxeCon talk.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/accessibility-beyond-code-compliance/","tags":["presentations","accessibility","AI/ML","inclusion","industry"],"image":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2023-03-16/hero.png","date_published":"2023-03-16T17:50:39Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/digital-exclusion-in-healthcare-how-to-change-it/","title":"đ Digital Exclusion in Healthcare & How to Change It","summary":"Fantastic talk from Sareh on assumptions we make about our users and how those assumptions exclude people who have different lived experiences than we do.","content_html":"Fantastic talk from Sareh on assumptions we make about our users and how those assumptions exclude people who have different lived experiences than we do. Her focus is on digital healthcare, but is applicable to everything.
\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi1NXGgsM3s
\nI love her calls to action as well!
\nRelated talk: Delivering Critical Information & Services
\n","social_text":"Amazing talk from @Sareh88 on assumptions we make about our users and how those assumptions exclude people who have different lived experiences than we do đ„°","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/digital-exclusion-in-healthcare-how-to-change-it/","external_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi1NXGgsM3s","tags":["accessibility","empathy","inclusive design","industry","user experience"],"date_published":"2023-01-27T17:17:39Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/openai-used-kenyan-workers-on-less-than-2-per-hour/","title":"đ OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour","content_html":"We talk a lot about needing to improve the ethics of our supply chains when it comes to mineral extraction and factory conditions, but we need protections for knowledge workers too!
\n","social_text":"We talk a lot about needing to improve the ethics of our supply chains when it comes to mineral extraction and factory conditions, but we need protections for knowledge workers too!","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/openai-used-kenyan-workers-on-less-than-2-per-hour/","external_url":"https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/","tags":["AI/ML","society","industry"],"image":"https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/DALL%C2%B7E-2023-01-09-18.12.05-a-seemingly-endless-view-african-workers-at-desks-in-front-of-computer-screens-in-a-printmaking-style.jpg?quality=85&w=1200&h=628&crop=1","date_published":"2023-01-19T23:30:59Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/303-creative-llc-v-elenis-is-incredibly-problematic/","title":"âđ» 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is Incredibly Problematic","summary":"The myriad reasons I donât think this case should be before the Supreme Court of the United States and the potential ramifications of it being decided in favor of the plaintiff.","content_html":"Before I get into this, let me start with this preface: I am not a legal expert by any means. I never even watched Law & Order. That said, I am keenly interested in the law and how it relates to bias and discrimination, particularly if that intersects with technology, especially the web.
\nWhich brings me to the subject at hand: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. I tweeted about this case, which is currently before the Supreme Court of the United States, the other day, but felt like I owed it a lengthierâand perhaps more enduringâdiscussion. So here goesâŠ
\nLorie Smith, a web designer operating as 303 Creative LLC, is interested in getting into the wedding announcement website game. She does not believe same-sex couples should be able to marry, so she wanted to put a notice on her website to that effect, stating that she would not create wedding announcements for same-sex weddings. This violates Coloradoâs anti-discrimination law (some of you may recall it from Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission) which prevents public businesses from discriminating against gay people, who are a âprotected classâ in legal speak.
\nSmith contests that her web design work is her âexpressionâ as an âartistâ and that the First Amendment protects her right to that expression. What a lot of the coverage fails to include, however, is
\nIn other words, this case is not based on fact, but rather on hypotheticals. Additionally, there has been no injury on either side, just the potential for one. Anyway, if youâre interested in learning more about the case, you can check out the following:
\nIn particular, I highly recommend listening to Justices Ketanji Brown Jacksonâs and Sonia Sotomayorâs contributions during oral arguments as they really cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of the case and its implications.
\nThis is something I talked about way back in my 2013 talk âDesigning With Empathyâ: Design is not art. Art is self-expression and serves the artist; design serves someone else (typically the client or their audience). If you donât work in the industry, however, this distinction isnât always clear. To quote Jeff Veen:
\n\n\nIâve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration. Good design is problem solving.
\n
Design is not the creation of pretty pictures and decoration. Design serves a purpose. In fact, the term âdesignâ originated in Medieval Latin as designare which meant âto mark outâ (hence the related term designate). To design is âto devise for a specific function or end.â To practice âweb designâ is to use the tools of graphic design to achieve the purpose of the project.
\nIn the context 303 Creative LLC seeks to operate, the purpose of each project would be to announce and provide the details about a wedding. 303 Creative LLC seeks to provide these services in exchange for money, at the behest of a client. It is not artistic expression any way you slice it.
\nIf youâve run any sort of service business, youâve likely come across clients and projects you had to turn away. Sometimes you donât have the bandwidth to take on the project. Other times you may not be interested in the kind of work it entails. Still others, you might not have the right expertise to do the project justice. And sometimes you just get a sense that the potential client is not someone youâd work well with (perhaps based on the tone of their inquiry). Regardless of the reason, however, you can gently explain to them that you cannot do the project for them and either leave it at that or recommend someone who might be able to help them.
\nIn the case of 303 Creative LLC, Smith could have easily used this approach to turn away same-sex couples without making it a thing. She could even have a form email prepared for this very purpose! And unless several couples approached her at roughly the same time and got wildly different responses with respect to her ability to create them a wedding websiteâwhich, to reiterate, is not a service she currently offersâno one would be any the wiser when it came to her belief that same-sex marriage doesnât (or shouldnât) exist.
\nBut no, thatâs not the route that Ms. Smith and 303 Creative LLC seeks to go. Instead, she would like to be able to express her âfirmly held religious beliefâ that same-sex marriages should not happen and to put a notice on her website explicitly saying she refuses to create a website for a same-sex wedding. She wants to put her bigotry on full display and she doesnât think she should suffer any legal consequences for doing so.
\nOver on Mastodon, I was asked to clarify whether the law allows you to refuse to work for a particular individual or corporation. For example, could a web designer refuse to do work for Chick-fil-a on account of their anti-LGBTQIA+ positions (a stance which I think theyâve reversed, but I donât eat there so Iâm not sure). A similar question was asked in Oral Arguments, framed as a speech writerâs ability to refuse to write a speech for a political candidate they disagree with. Public accommodations law, which is what is being considered in this case, would not require you to work on any project for anyone as long as the reason you are refusing your service is not on account of their membership in a protected class.
\nCorporations are not a protected class. Neither are politicians. Same-sex couples are protected from discrimination under both the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
\nIf the conservative majority on the Court decides to ignore all of the facts in this case an rule in favor of 303 Creative LLC, that decision will open the floodgates for discrimination against people based on their protected status by anyone who claims to have a religious objection to treating that person respectfully.
\nFor example, people with disabilities are a protected class under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If this ruling goes in 303 Creative LLCâs favor, a business owner could claim eugenics as a âfirmly held religious viewâ and refuse to provide accommodations for them. From the web side of things, that could mean they could intentionally make their site inaccessible to people who use screen readers. In the physical world, it could mean they could make entry to their business impossible for anyone using a wheelchair.
\nIt might take a little time, but weâd likely end up in another âJim Crowâ-like era where restaurants are once again free to adorn their windows with âWhites Onlyâ signs. Where the grocery store hangs a âChristians Onlyâ sign on its door. Where the local bank proudly announces that only âHeterosexual Evangelical Christian Womenâ can apply for an open teller position. Where only women under 25 can date Leonardo DiCaprio⊠wait.
\nInstead of embracing our differences as a complement to one another and for the betterment of our society, condoning this would further drive us apart and foster a world of exclusion. People could use their religion to mask their bigotry and claim exemption from having to provide equal access to people based on their disabilities, gender (or gender expression), sexual orientation, racial characteristics, religion, age, or any other protected category. Thatâs not a world I want to live in nor is it a future I want for my kid.
\nIf it comes to pass, I suppose the one silver lining is that weâll learn what companies deserve our business, but that hardly outweighs the potential harms for people who need access to food, clothing, shelter, information, and other necessities for existence both online and off that are supposed to be guaranteed by anti-discrimination laws.
\nItâs all in the Supreme Courtâs hands at this point, but I am more than a little concerned with what this could mean for the future here in the United States.
\n","social_text":"A longer essay on 303 Creative v. Elenis and why it should not be before the court in the first place as well as the potential it has to undermine other public accommodations laws.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/303-creative-llc-v-elenis-is-incredibly-problematic/","tags":["accessibility","business","design","industry","society"],"image":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2022-12-13/hero.jpg","date_published":"2022-12-13T21:03:25Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/appearances/podcasts/2021-10-15-perspectives-with-aaron-gustafson/","title":"đ§ Perspectives with Aaron Gustafson","content_html":"I joined Luke and Jonathan to talk about the Open Web and share his perspective (and some guidance) with the WordPress community.
\n","url":"https://crossword.fm/podcast/perspectives-with-aaron-gustafson/","tags":["progressive enhancement","web standards","industry"],"date_published":"2021-10-15T00:00:00Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/the-world-wide-work/","title":"đ The World-Wide Work","content_html":"Ethan delivered a powerful talk at New Adventures. It covers a wide range of topics including design, power, inequality, and more. Moreover it offers some suggestions for what we can do to make the web (and the world) better.
\n","social_text":"Did you miss @beepâs incredible talk on design, power (and so much more) at @naconf? You can watch it (or read it) here.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/the-world-wide-work/","external_url":"https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/the-world-wide-work/","tags":["industry","web design","inclusive design"],"image":"https://ethanmarcotte.com/img/ethan-thumb-social.jpg","date_published":"2019-10-23T17:26:52Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/when-engineers-become-whistle-blowers/","title":"đ When Engineers Become Whistle-Blowers","content_html":"Ralph Nader is absolutely right:
\nâWe need more engineers who embody the three principles of any profession â independence, scholarly pursuits, and commitment to public service. Those are the vital ethical pillars to helping engineers withstand the great pressures to place commercial priorities over their engineering integrity and limit harm to the public.â
\n","social_text":"This.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/when-engineers-become-whistle-blowers/","external_url":"https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/when-engineers-become-whistleblowers/","tags":["industry","society"],"image":"https://static.scientificamerican.com/blogs/cache/file/75FD8177-0CC5-4829-BEBE66F3248FBBB7.jpg","date_published":"2019-05-15T14:36:52Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/nothing-fails-like-success/","title":"đ Nothing Fails Like Success","content_html":"\n\nFrom optimistically conceived origins and message statements about making the world a better place, too many websites and startups have become the leading edge of bias and trauma, especially for marginalized and at-risk groups.
\n
This is an important read.
\n","social_text":"Great piece from @zeldman on the unsavory consequences of mortgaging the webâs future.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/links/nothing-fails-like-success/","external_url":"https://alistapart.com/article/nothing-fails-like-success/","tags":["web design","industry"],"image":"https://i0.wp.com/alistapart.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/nothing-fails-like-success-illo.jpg?fit=1200%2C730&ssl=1","date_published":"2019-04-12T15:36:51Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/appearances/podcasts/2018-09-24-wasp-and-pwas/","title":"đ§ WaSP and PWAs","content_html":"Dave, Chris, and I talked at length about the Web Standards Project (WaSP), the web, and progressive web apps (PWAs).
\n","url":"https://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/330-aaron-gustafson-wasp-pwas/","tags":["progressive web apps","web standards","industry"],"date_published":"2018-09-24T00:00:00Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/publications/articles/yes-that-web-project-should-be-a-pwa/","title":"đ Yes, That Web Project Should Be a PWA","content_html":"Most websitesâand, more importantly, their readersâcan benefit from becoming PWAs. And itâs so easy!
\n","url":"https://alistapart.com/article/yes-that-web-project-should-be-a-pwa","tags":["progressive web apps","industry","web design","web development"],"date_published":"2017-08-30T00:00:00Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/publications/articles/a-funny-thing-happened-to-me-on-the-way-to-2016.../","title":"đ A Funny Thing Happened To Me On The Way To 2016âŠ","content_html":"I join an impressive list of AEA speakers in reflecting on where we were in our careers 10 years ago.
\n","url":"http://aneventapart.com/news/post/a-funny-thing-happened-to-me-on-the-way-to-20:16","tags":["career","industry"],"date_published":"2016-06-07T00:00:00Z"}]}