I talk a lot about how "empathy" in commercial UX is mostly a posture because in reality capitalism doesn't care, but it's important to consider the additional problem of people in charge who are too shallow to be capable of understanding "why" some people prefer, or need, to do things differently than they do.
This one time I was telling the ceo/founder of a startup I worked for that our react app was making my new macbook pro crawl and we need to fix that because it was a b2b product that would be used by people in finance offices decked out with dell opticrap machines. He responded with surprise "wow, steve. you really care about people don't you?"
I was kinda floored. Anyway, here we are...
https://web.archive.org/web/20230727121010/https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684491212219359232
@fasterandworse He has probably fired every employee that has accommodations or visible disabilities, except for the one person he had to rehire because he enraged an entire country after firing him.
I mean dark mode aside, the dude is a proud eugenicist, so I can't imagine accessibility is one of his priorities.
Yep, totally agree. I shared this link with no surprise that he's like this. Just wanted to highlight one of those moments that are a giveaway to this kind of person.
@fasterandworse
I've successfully convinced front-end designers to have empathy in the past, especially younger ones who really hadn't spent time thinking about other people's tech needs. Hell, back when I was A Youth™️, I had my own boneheaded takes about people who use tech in a way I don't (vi/emacs wars, lol, I'm old).
But yeah, exactly, Musk isn't in "assume good intent" or "teachable moment". He has for years been 100% in "when people tell you who they are, believe them."