Tags: compliance

Overlay Fact Sheet

Based on the problems with accessiBe and its ilk, I have signed my name to this:

1. We will never advocate, recommend, or integrate an overlay which deceptively markets itself as providing automated compliance with laws or standards.
2. We will always advocate for the remediation of accessibility issues at the source of the original error.
3. We will refuse to stay silent when overlay vendors use deception to market their products.
4. More specifically, we hereby advocate for the removal of accessiBe, AudioEye, UserWay, User1st, MK-Sense, and all similar products and encourage the site owners who’ve implemented these products to use more robust, independent, and permanent strategies to making their sites more accessible.

Breaking looms by Matthew Ström

Another follow-on to my post about design systems and automation. Here, Matthew invokes the spirit of the much-misunderstood Luddite martyrs. It’s good stuff.

Design systems are used by greedy software companies to fatten their bottom line. UI kits replace skilled designers with cheap commoditized labor.

Agile practices pressure teams to deliver more and faster. Scrum underscores soulless feature factories that suck the joy from the craft of software development.

But progress requires more than breaking looms.

Design Systems, Agile, and Industrialization | Brad Frost

Brad weighs in on what I wrote about design systems and automation. He rightly points out that the issue isn’t with any particular tool—and a design system is, after all, a tool—but rather with the culture and processes of the organisation.

Sure, design systems have the ability to dehumanize and that’s something to actively watch out for. But I’d also say to pay close attention to the processes and organizational culture we take part in and contribute to.

There’s a full-on rant here about the dehumanising effects of what’s called “agile” at scale:

I’ve come to the conclusion that “enterprise web development” is just regular web development, only stripped of any joy or creativity or autonomy. It’s plugging a bunch of smart people into the matrix and forcing them to crank out widgets and move the little cards to the right.

The design systems we swim in. — Ethan Marcotte

But a design system that optimizes for consistency relies on compliance: specifically, the people using the system have to comply with the system’s rules, in order to deliver on that promised consistency. And this is why that, as a way of doing something, a design system can be pretty dehumanizing.

Ethan shares his thoughts on what I wrote about design systems and automation. He offers this test on whether a design system is empowering or disempowering:

Does the system you work with allow you to control the process of your work, to make situational decisions? Or is it simply a set of rules you have to follow?

IEBlog : Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone

Great news from Redmond: IE8 passes the Acid2 test.