I’m wondering/surprised about the A being piled in - isn’t accessibility a law? I remember doing a11y work long before DEI, and it wasn’t a political issue.
I find it interesting that this use of racism is passed off without concern but it would be uncool to call someone here a racist. I don't really see the difference.
All that being said, they seem like similar principles to me, but I'm not the one throwing around what's racist, and based on your use of it, I guess you'd disagree.
Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
Also, you crossed badly into personal attack here. Please don't do that on HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. You may not owe people who you feel are losers better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
In my defense, I’ve been advocating for accessibility in computing for over 20 years, and reading the original post really enraged me as it goes against all I stand for, hence reacting too strongly here.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
The federal bureaucracy has been making moves for months to prevent Trump from effectively changing policy[0].
Moving ADA protected accessibility concerns into the literal DEI departments (I don't mean individual people) is clearly part of that attempt to "harden" themselves from executive orders and top down policy changes.
Indeed the ATF has just blatantly violated the executive order ending DEI programs[1].
Ultimately it's the bureaucracy using accessibility as a shield who are responsible for it being attacked.
What I say is certainly... pithy but I take exception with saying any of it is un-substantive or flamebait.
You didn't include any of that information above—you just made a denunciatory flamewar comment. That's what we're asking you not to do.
If you had posted this later comment originally, it would have been fine, or almost fine—it's probably still too much of a political battle post to be completely fine.
Yes but I think the political climate is such that laws are all now subjective and could be tossed aside at a whim by any executive action and follow on rulings that would side with it. In any case, could be a long period of limbo while we “decide” what each law even means to those in power. So with that, what does something being a law even mean right now?
It's very likely that there will be court cases soon trying to figure out what does this actually mean in practice. (The gov itself has a month to figure out what it means in the first place) I mean, apart from the performative cruelty and defining a minority outgroup to be angry at. But yeah, accessibility is supposed to be required for government properties, by various laws.
I think there's a big difference between something being a law and there being anyone around to implement that law, and indeed, there being a government department or regulator checking the law is being followed.
IMO, the thing to remember about the current administration, is that chaos is a useful tool. And for the last several admins (at least), actually solving problems isn’t really that interesting.
It is just as useful for them that court challenges do work (at least against many of the smaller players) - as it gives them a chance to blame the courts, and push for more power.
They aren’t there to actually solve problems (well, most problems anyway). They are there to get more personal power and wealth.
If they can do that by pretending to do what someone needs, while actually not really solving that need and instead sowing the seeds of a bigger mess only they can solve? Awesome.
If some of their supporters get thrown into the meat grinder for that to happen? Meh. As long as they can plausibly blame them for it, anyway.
This, IMO applies to all the major ‘split’ issues - abortion, gun control, immigration, you name it.
One ‘advantage’ too for those in power for those playing this game, is anyone someone ‘on the edge’ of doing legal stuff has to support them and give them even more power to undermine the legal system, since a reversion to the mean will definitely put them in jail.
Yes, that's my point. The objective is to overwhelm the society and its institutions - a disease that stresses the host's immune response until it breaks. The lower courts will stand by since the ultimate court is in the bag for this guy.
I regard it as a branch of bureaucracy. If you establish a department to handle a matter that is claimed to be important but is actually insignificant (often for public relations purposes), this department will actively expand its influence, inserting and entangling itself into every corner of the organization to avoid its own existential crisis.
to avoid misunderstanding, here, the 'claimed to be important but is actually insignificant' refers to something that, from the organization's perspective
All of it is law, albeit a specific interpretation of the law.
‘legitimate business purpose’ discrimination has always been allowed, which is why it’s okay to only hire black actors for a role that calls for black actors in a movie, or only pretty young women as strippers, etc.
Also, discrimination like ‘I just don’t like them’.
There are a million different ways to structure these rules however (and actually do hiring) with different entirely predictable outcomes in actual employee race/sex/gender composition. As well as different types of employment environments that when interacting with regional cultural/socialization backgrounds, will result in entirely predictable outcomes in actual employee race/sex/gender/national origin/age compositions.
For example, you aren’t going to find many supermodels working at the local sewer treatment plant. Or blandly ugly people working in the entertainment industry.
However, depending on the organization and size (the federal gov’t has had this since the 70’s, and it’s been expanding over the years to even large companies the last 10ish or so), there is a federal requirement for Affirmative Action as well, where if the company/org, etc. doesn’t have the ‘right amount’ of people who meet course these criteria determined by the department of labor, then there is a presumption that it proves ‘defacto’ illegal discrimination.
There is no need for candidates being discriminated against illegally at that point to show they are being discriminated against (and in fact, they may not actually be discriminated against in any explicit or conscious way) - the mere fact they are not there in a given % of representation is taken of evidence of that discrimination.
That means if a company/organization gets too much attention, then they are required to actually discriminate against other candidates to ensure the outcomes of their hiring and retention roughly match what the DOL would expect. Regardless of the actual circumstances/suitability of their hiring.
That also means if someone is ‘over represented’, then that means they’ll be discriminated against quite consistently and per the department of labor, ‘legally’. It’s essentially a ‘necessary evil’.
The backlash now appears to be targeting anything related to those efforts, nominally under the idea of meritocracy, but eh, that is frankly not a very convincing figleaf. And yes, it will be targeting everyone who isn’t.. well, you can guess.
As was said in another comment on this thread, some agencies chose to add accessibility into their DEI programs. A11y needs were already legally protected (and still is). Unfortunately by tying it into a political concept (that is not precisely protected by law) that was implemented via an executive order, the agencies that chose to add the A to their DEI ended up putting those budgets for a11y at a temporary risk by executive order too. The government still needs to follow the ADA law and budget for that accordingly.
This description from Know Your Meme[1] is accurate as far as I’ve seen the phrase used:
“Leopards Eating People's Faces Party refers to a parody of regretful voters who vote for cruel and unjust policies (and politicians) and are then surprised when their own lives become worse as a result. It has been commonly used to parody regretful Brexit and Trump voters.”
The parody here is essentially saying that if you supported the Republicans (Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party) and then you ended up being harmed (leopards ate your face) as a result of their policies that are explicit in their intent to harm people (we will eat people’s faces) despite thinking that you wouldn’t be harmed (“I never thought the leopards would eat __my__ face”) then you are a fool.
This response is already so tired, like we need more excuses to be incompassionate with one another?
It seems like it's just an excuse for mostly fine-under-trump White folks to go "welp, don't blame me, I didn't vote for him" to people who are actually impacted by his policies. And they seem to apply it liberally to people who may have never supported him or who belong to demographic groups that statistically voted for him way less than White folks.
And even if they did vote for trump and are now facing the consequences? I still care enough not to laugh at them from the side lines for being the victim of a con man, and so should you.
There was outrage for all of those things. Not by most Trumpers, no, and certainly not enough outrage, but there was and is opposition to all of the things you listed.
So many Liberals seem to have been emboldened by losing to Trump a second time into embracing bullying and letting go of what empathy and compassion that they had instead of using the moment to question why their party is so disconnected from so much of the country and why so many who are suffering would fall for Trump's lies instead of Democrats and the status quo.
It's not just that it's wrong to use your anger over a bully being elected as an excuse to become a bully yourself, importantly it's also a garbage strategy for trying to defeat MAGA down the road.
This recent strain of Liberalism and it's compromise is so exhausting. They sell out everything they're supposed to stand for and embrace things like fracking, the lie of migrant crime, they choose to proudly wear the endorsement of people like the Cheneys and expect to win elections by being "diet Republicans"?
It seems like they'll do just about anything instead of actually challenging the systems that cause common folks to suffer.
>There was outrage for all of those things. Not by most Trumpers, no, and certainly not enough outrage, but there was and is opposition to all of the things you listed.
Where was it?
All I saw were people lecturing "the left" and calling Trump critics hypocrites and blaming them for Trumpism just as you are. Faux outrage over Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" comment - which she was 100% correct about. Not so much as an ounce of self-reflection or awareness, only ever deflection and projection, only ever blaming the other side and acting like victims.
I agree with you 100% about the failures of Liberalism and the Democrats though, but people are well aware of that. Unfortunately the system only affords us two options, and we're forced to choose the lesser evil. As far as bullying goes, I mean... my side isn't the one sending out ICE agents to kidnap brown people or stripping gay and trans people of their rights or waging war against "equality" and "woke."
Maybe you should be asking the people who keep voting for the systems causing common folks to suffer to challenge them. You won't though, that isn't why you're here.
The news articles, the protests and marches, the op eds, the videos, the comments? Yes, there has been lots of outrage across every medium.
And are you really surprised by that shift? Many in this country are suffering, and bought in to Obama's "HOPE" and "CHANGE" and got next to nothing for it. In this election Harris tried to sell herself as simply "Biden but younger" instead of presenting transformative ideas to help people - and in a choice between continued suffering or the promise of something better of course many will choose the potential for something better - even if the person presenting it is a deplorable con man.
And yes, I will absolutely call out the so-called Left in this country for doing too little, for being hypocrites, for fighting for the status quo rather than for their constituents. Sure, Republicans are worse, but Democrats keep handing them free elections by being utterly tepid.
And, for the record, "the people who keep voting for the systems causing common folks to suffer" includes anyone voting for Democrats too.
>The news articles, the protests and marches, the op eds, the videos, the comments? Yes, there has been lots of outrage across every medium.
From the left, yes. Nary a peep from the right. A trickle compared to a torrent. Let's not pretend there was any sort of significant backlash against Trump on that side. If they really wanted Trump gone they could have gotten rid of him.
>and in a choice between continued suffering or the promise of something better of course many will choose the potential for something better - even if the person presenting it is a deplorable con man.
Except the people who voted for the deplorable con man were never going to vote for Harris, or Biden, or any Democrat regardless of what they offered, ever.
I think your criticisms of the Democrats are spot on, but I am curious what you think a Democratic Party platform that Trumpists would have accepted in 2024 would actually look like.
Also you can say "Republicans are worse" but you're in here implying the anger of the right and the choices they've made are perfectly justified as a response to the left, but you aren't willing to extend the same sympathy to the left. You're calling the left racist for taking some schadenfreude (which is weird given that Trump voters are almost exclusively white) when the right has literally run on schadenfreude and racism for a decade.
Trump voters are not automatons. They are (presumably) adults, with agency and free will (whatever that is) and are morally and ethically responsible for the decisions they make and the consequences of their actions. Were they lied to? Yes. Populism is, at its core, a deceitful and manipulative ideology. That doesn't mean they get let off the hook, they can get just as much as they give.
> So many Liberals seem to have been emboldened by losing to Trump a second time into embracing bullying and letting go of what empathy and compassion that they had instead of using the moment to question why their party is so disconnected from so much of the country and why so many who are suffering would fall for Trump's lies instead of Democrats and the status quo.
This gets at the truth.
To generalize: if people can't get a win, they'll settle for blame. Pointing the finger at others feels pretty good. Whereas the soul-searching you speak of is suffering, especially for those invested in ideology.
IMHO, this coping is inevitable. We have no leaders who can admit our fault, nor do we longer share a set of teachings to make sense of where we went astray. What we do seem to have in abundance is rage, which fuels the comforting political fantasies we're witnessing today.
The purpose of these changes is to hurt those who are vulnerable to them. It's shocking to see how quickly people were willing to trade that support for some perceived short term gain. I suspect a lot of people are about to find out they're vulnerable too.
Not quite sure what you're referring to here - Silicon Valley voted heavily against the current president. 68% margin the other way in Santa Clara county and 73% in San Mateo.
Some did, others didn't. That's how it normally goes; there were plenty of Romney, McCain, and Bush voters in tech. The only reason it went differently during the last Trump presidency is that he went out of his way to antagonize tech leaders while promising to end the H1B program their businesses heavily rely on.
More the SV tech-bro cabal. As I predicted this submission (1 hour old and ~70 upvotes, reached #1 10 minutes ago) has been removed from the front page. In fact I can't find how far it's been throttled. Even if it used to be, Silicon Valley is no longer the friend of anyone who holds a conscience.
You're right... I can't find it by scrolling. I thought this site was all algorithmically ranked? Are there people throttling material critical of SV and/or other topics?
By the by, is it possible to see where a post is (or isn't) in the numbered list from within the post?
Nope. It's not the first time I've seen this happen. And I think it might even be against the guidelines to imply it ever does. If it was flagged the normal way, there would at least have been a 'flagged' designation on the post, whereas this one was done silently, but by who?
Edit: Oh wait. It has since been flagged. Must have been too political or something, because we all know the tech scene is especially apolitical right now.
You have been using HN for over 10 years but don't know about the flamewar filter? There is some magic comment to upvote ratio that bumps posts down once reached.
The post hadn't been ratioed by the time the throttle happened, so it wasn't that mate. It's since been ratioed by people coming back to reply to comments.
I think the stated purpose is the purpose: to cut waste. DEI based on race or sex is corruption. Helping the blind be maximally comfortable with maximal opportunity is just a plain decent thing and that should be law (for those people and orgs who unfortunately need the compulsion). The conversation about DEI is not about the blind.
Unfortunately (for those impacted) accessibility has been rolled into DEI and called DEIA and the executive orders included accessibility in their revocation. See https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi... for an example. You'll see revocation for both DEI and DEIA, where the A stands for accessibility.
If they wanted to, they could have focused on DEI, but they intentionally and explicitly added accessibility to the conversation and are impacting those programs directly.
It references DEIA because some DEI programs did a sneaky rebranding effort, using disabled people as a political shield. Where in the EO does it reference eliminating services for disabled people?
What short term gain? The calculation of (made up short term gain) - (people hurt by these resentful executive orders) can only be net positive if you minimize the (un)intended consequences out of some flavour/blend of isms.
No, the purpose of these is to progress a nationalist agenda that advances a political goal. This is achieved by repeating the lie that these policies are harmful to members that aren't in these groups. Harming the people involved is a second order effect of these changes and not the primary goal (at least for some / most people). Most people that are aligned with these objectives are either ignorant of the harm or at best indifferent to it compared to the harm they perceive DEI policies do to those not in the minority groups.
To be clear I believe those perspectives are abhorrent, but they have an understandable genesis that's based on a real fear that has been stoked for political gain.
While the intent of DEI policies could've been good, the result was virtually the opposite of the intent:
- disabled people were kept completely out of discussion. The only time I've worked with a disabled developer was in a company that did not have any DEI
- lots of policies boil down to "what skin color are you", which is pure racism, except you're not allowed to point that out
- "it's okay to be anyone you want to be, unless you're a white straight man, we don't like those"
- lots of annoying surface-level events related to LGBT groups without addressing any actual issues these people face
- "affirmative action" aka "discrimination is good when we do it"
- laser focus on women's issues, and then surprised Pikachu face that men listen to Andrew Tate because nobody else tells them they're valuable
- language police and forcing phrases that would've belonged to a comedy sketch 10 years prior. Expressions like "what are your pronouns" and "uterus-bodied people" just don't resonate with the general public
- nail in the coffin: bully attitude. "Either you accept our viewpoint or we'll bully you into doing so". This completely shut down the societal discussion about equality. Democrats thoughts that the discussion about equality was done because the problem was solved, while in reality people were afraid of speaking up, and secretly voted for Trump
As a white straight male, the only inkling that I may have been discriminated against in the workplace my entire life has come 100% from right wing media outlets and conservative politics. I have never been on the receiving end of any decisions that I felt that I was unfairly judged based on the color of my skin. I'm a single data point of course, but it would surprise me if this was not more common. But of course reporting the absence of discrimination isn't really newsworthy. Maybe we the un-oppressed need to stop being so beige about it or something?
I've seen in larger companies there's a lot of career growth initiatives focused around the typical groups that DEI have been deemed oppressed. So if you're not in those groups you're left out.
Now whether it's right to have those or not to "balance" any sense of perceived structural inequity is a different question altogether. But I can totally see how a white straight male would feel discriminated against.
It sounds like the deia department was ineffective, but for some reason it’s bad that the ineffective department is going away. What were we paying these people for if they couldn’t do a simple thing like get screen reader software?
This is why people want to get rid of DEI. Aside from all their obnoxious rhetoric, they don’t even accomplish the thing they say they’re supposed to do.
I know people will claim that now nobody will buy any screen reader software, but it doesn’t sound like anyone was doing that before either.
Nothing in the post indicates that he obtained his software through some kind of "DEIA" department and that's a serious misunderstanding of the efforts being made by the current administration in the gov't right now. They are not just closing "DEIA" "departments."
I didn’t say he obtained it through the DEIA department. Obviously, it went through the normal procurement process. What I’m saying is if the DEIA department was supposed to be advocating for him and helping with the process they were clearly useless in that regard.
‘Veteran owned’, ‘Black owned’, ‘Women owned’, or the real meal ticket - ‘Black Women Veteran owned’ is a huge thing in gov’t procurement. To the point where if you aren’t those things, you’d better be a major (near monopoly) provider and have your own congressman or two ensuring you’ll get bids.
If they remove the affirmative action requirement in contractors, it’s going to be a bloodbath.
Not so much from an actual ‘which company does what’, but rather in all the various borderline (or actual) fraudulent corporate structures that have been setup to game the system.
This has been going on (and well understood) for at least 30 years that I personally know about.
It will. For example, a 2023 executive order (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/22/2023-03..., sec. 7) established a procurement quota for minority-owned small businesses, and required all agencies to work with the SBA to optimize their procurement processes around this.
I'm not claiming this is the only problem with government contracting, but it's an example of exactly the kind of policy which leads to the source article's complaint. The author may have identified a vendor with a cheaper and better product, but if they let everyone go around making such decisions how would they know whether they're hitting the quota?
More and more it’s hard to find people on HN that don’t tightly cling to party lines.
The numbers I’ve seen some of these departments get paid is mind boggling. It’s possible to both value these principles and yet be in disgust at what a grift so much of it has become.
I was raised Republican in a very conservative area. I attended church and went to a christian school from K-12. There's a lot of traditional conservative values that I agree with. The Republican Party currently embodies none of those principals. Frankly, I'd be voting D just out of the lesser of two evils, and it's not even a long shot.
I yearn for a proper Conservative Party to bring some sanity back to the world. I wish that the Christian right would actually follow the teaching of Jesus that they claim.
I don't agree with a lot of what the Democrats do, but they generally do what they do out of a place of good and Republicans are working out of a place of hate. And that matters. Tearing it all down and hurting people just isn't something I feel that I can support, no matter what other things they do that I might agree with or might help me.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It's quite a bit different from my own experience, though. Only a few short months ago, I was under constant attack from various public members of the Democratic party for being a white male with center-right views. The vitriol was quite unhinged, really.
From my perspective, both sides engage in it just as much as the other, and it's getting worse because people are choosing to respond in kind rather than take the higher ground. I voted for neither party in the last cycle, and it's likely to stay that way for me unless things dramatically change.
> I was under constant attack from various public members of the Democratic party for being a white male with center-right views.
Could you give an actual example? This isn't some kind of gotcha, I'm genuinely curious. As a non-American the Democratic Party seem pathologically obsessed with reaching across the aisle to the moderate right winger.
Well, I suppose we can start with the fact that anyone voting on the opposite ticket was routinely accused of ending democracy. Just look up various reactions to Scott Jennings on CNN for an example.
Honestly, though, I'm more curious about the examples that led you to believe they reach across the aisle. Neither party does, both are firmly encamped, and both routinely resort to verbal attacks based on party affiliation.
I hear you. The extremes on both sides are awful. I try to ignore them when I make a decision on who to vote for. I try to look at the actual impact the policies and agendas have.
That said, ignoring the loudest voices in the room, especially when they're pointed at you is very hard to do.
I believe it is mentioned in the executive order to cover things like government contracting that is discriminatory, where vendors who are of a certain race or gender or disabled get preference when bidding.
For instance a vendor who hires a party for testing their software who hire people who otherwise wouldn't get hired. And who turn out to be pretty good at testing. But you wouldn't know that otherwise. People think DEI is just charity.
Richard J Murphy coined the term "Age of Aggression" which we are now in (before we were in an "Age of Indifference" and before that "Age of Compassion").
A11y, good-faith DEI, equality/equity programs were conceived in the AoC and then started to get implemented in the AoI, but in the AoA it will be rolled back with extreme prejudice (at least in USA) with plethora unintended consequences as laid out by OP. While people gormlessly argue about the myth of meritocracy, there will come a certain point where only those who can't recognize (or actively dismiss/excuse) N*zi salutes will be the only ones conveniently not suspected of being "legacy DEI" hires.
Relevant quote: “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
Yes they are literally doing that. I wouldn't usually censor it but I know not-shitting-on-DEI gets heavily downvoted/flagged on here so I thought I could avoid some of that mob. I failed in that regard so far it seems...
I've never seen a Nazi salute that didn't have a stiff upper body, he was just flailing around. At best you could call that a caricature of a Nazi salute, kinda like Springtime for Hitler.
I won't go and find counter examples, because a) I disagree that he was just "flailing around" (you can literally see him tense up), and b) I disagree that the Nazi salute requires some specific level of upper body stiffness. There are plenty of videos where literally Hitler makes the same motions with a similar posture.
> You want it to be a Nazi salute, that is all I hear.
That's fine with me, but you should be aware that you're breaking the site guidelines in doing so: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
> Why should he deny it when he is obviously not a Nazi?
Why would it matter whether he is a Nazi, when the question is whether he did a Nazi salute? You and I aren't Nazis, yet we could both do a Nazi salute right now.
I also reject your premise that he's "obviously not a Nazi" - you'd have a great point if he didn't agree with Nazi talking points[0], and didn't give both platform and reach to Nazis, and so many other Nazi-adjacent fauxpas over the last months. But that's not relevant to the discussion, so let's not retread those grounds, okay?
> That's fine with me, but you should be aware that you're breaking the site guidelines in doing so: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I can't find any other reason why you think a Nazi salute is that sloppy, as otherwise you see people do Nazi salutes all the time. Nazi salutes are illegal in parts of the world, if you are going to prosecute someone for it then it needs to be way clearer marked than what he did.
If he combined it with "Heil Hitler", or did it with a stiff upper body and/or left the arm staying in final position for a few seconds like fascists liked, then sure, but he did neither of those things.
Why else would people want to call that a Nazi salute when it is so far from the real thing? It is such a strong accusation to make, and similar motions are so easy and common that you should assume innocence's here unless it is extremely clear.
> Why else would people want to call that a Nazi salute when it is so far from the real thing?
If you ask "why do they want to call it that" instead of "why do they call it that" you're already not asking in good faith.
> It is such a strong accusation to make
I would call it an observation rather than an accusation.
"you only see it because you want to see it", now that is an accusation, one you have no argument for other than what could be considered a skill issue ("can't find any other reason") and against nobody can defend themselves.
> similar motions are so easy and common
Show me a similar motion that is common.
And then there's Musk's support of the AfD, and how he's calling everyone who doesn't think he's funny a "leftist extremist". He, in word and deed, is a fascist. The salute doesn't even add anything meaningful. It still is that salute however.
Musk just showed it there. Fascist loved their stiffness, by tilting his head and curving his body like that it is clearly not a fascist salute, if you look at photos of people doing it they wouldn't disgrace Hitler by doing it like that.
> If you ask "why do they want to call it that" instead of "why do they call it that" you're already not asking in good faith.
Ok you are right, I should have assumed you were ignorant instead of malicious, which I started out with. But when you said that you want to see it as a Nazi salute even when evidence that it wasn't, then it there isn't any other option left. You wont find footage of Nazis doing the salute like that, since they didn't.
And Hitler did his own versions that was just waving back, that doesn't mean that waving is a Hitler salute. But you see everyone else there standing stiffly and straight, not at all Like Musk.
> And then there's Musk's support of the AfD, and how he's calling everyone who doesn't think he's funny a "leftist extremist". He, in word and deed, is a fascist. The salute doesn't even add anything meaningful. It still is that salute however.
So you were already biased into seeing Musk as a Nazi, that makes you a terrible judge of whether this is a Nazi salute. This answers my question.
That question warranted that level of answer, throwing out your heart to the masses is a very common gesture. That he did the throwing motion with his upper body shows that is what he did, not the salute.
Imagine the military salute, but you change it by curving your body and tilting your head, now its no longer the military salute. Same thing applies to nazi salute. Trying to see it anyway is just bias speaking.
Edit: And if you ask the experts, ADL, they say it wasn't a nazi salute. Since Musk is an antisemitic Nazi according to you, so someone ADL would be very biased against, we there have strong evidence it wasn't.
So I just wondered why you rejected such strong evidence against your assertion that it was a nazi salute. But now I know.
I think you know that it's not about one still photo, but about the whole gesture. In case you're acting in good faith and didn't know: it's about the whole gesture.
If you want to argue that politicians have made the same gesture, you need to provide videos showing the whole gesture.
If you don't mind me asking: what do you hope to achieve with your approach to discussion? You're throwing around insults, bad faith replies and fallacies left and right. No matter what your motivations are, you would convince more people if you responded in a respectful and intellectually curious way. So why do you choose this approach on this site?
You broke the site guidelines very badly with this comment and other comments you posted to this thread. Could you please not do that? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Maybe I'm unaware of previous comments, but this user neither called Musk a Zionist nor an "anti-Jewish Nazi", so why ask him to answer for other people?
So Elon isn't a nazi because other people said other things? That's not a great argument. It skips all relevant substance to just rely on the assessment of one group of people, for no apparent reason aside from their disagreement with the present argument.
> I see people posting that Elon was at Auschwitz this time last year - therefore, his recent "gesture" is not antisemitic. I was there, too. With Elon, I am embarrassed that I have photos of this on my phone. My love, Gidon Lev, was the "special guest" of this photo-op event. We thought, at the time, that it would be good publicity. But I would not share the photo today. I chatted with Elon Musk. I spent hours with him and walked with him through Auschwitz. I stood with him, looking at the nauseating heaps of hair, luggage, and shoes flooded with violet light meant to preserve it.
> Is Musk an antisemite? People, actually, it's worse - he doesn't care whatsoever. Elon, father of "little X" as he described his freezing cold son to me, literally does not care. He was unmoved by the experience. For Gidon, to be in the place where is father, Ernst, died on a death march - whether shot by the side of the road or having simply collapsed - was a huge deal. Elon did not care. He was about his press junket and his bodyguards. I was ten feet from him as he posed for the cameras of his entourage. He was utterly detached. He cared about how he looked. When he placed a wreath at Auschwitz and Gideon was overlooked, he walked away with the cameras whirring. This is Elon Musk. A sociopath, if there ever was one. To deduce, from this visit, that he is a friend of the Jews is desperately naive.
What a terrible auth government. All the policies are regressive leading to less science, less technological progression, less clean energy and less rights and more inequality for the vast majority of this country.
As the a11y community has noted, the whitehouse.gov accessibility policy has been removed and is not available from the site footer.
Previous policy was:
> agencies must include a link to the accessibility statement in the sitewide footer, per OMB guidance on Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience (M-23-22)
> Per M-23-22, agencies should not link to digital accessibility statements from a sub-page, such as a “Website Policies & Notices”. Agencies must link directly to the digital accessibility statement from the website footer
The messaging leading up to the election was all about DEI. Who decided to add the A to it too? Complaining about accessibility wasn't on the mind of any Trump voters that I know.
Project 2025 contained a number of governing agenda proposals that include weakening Americans with Disabilities Act and reducing funding for accessibility programs. It's part of their core belief in meritocracy to an extreme.
A change of direction was wanted by the population and at least we avoided going down the path to a Harrison Bergeron dystopia, but this may be an overcorrection.
ADA was used as a weapon against small businesses and caused a lot of products to change in unwanted ways for ADA compliance, leaving those who are only purchasing for personal use without good options, so I understand the opposition. Hopefully this leads to a more commonsense approach to accessibility instead of mandated bureaucratic box-ticking.
First, DEI became DEIA under Biden, see the executive order [1] (now worryingly removed from the site). That had some logic as a mission creep which is always welcomed by the bureaucrats.
Second, when the Trump decided to dismantle DEI, keeping "DEIA" didn't make sense, and surgically removing DEI from DEIA is not his style. So it was removed altogether, and the bureaucrats cared more about going with pendulum swing more than caring about any unintended effects, so anything associated with DEI was removed without any care about accessibility.
Once they start touching the Library of Congress's program for free audio and Braille books for the blind and other print disabled, then we'll see some action from the blind community. However, I suspect the Deaf community will act first, and with force. It's amazing to see how indifferent people are around me. Trump voters are all about getting rid of DEI, completely missing the A, which they'll someday need if they grow old enough.
At least Apple isn't getting rid of their accessibility program. But I fear what this will do as a signal to other companies, particularly apps like Doordash, which some people rely on. Oh, and can't forget Facebook, which is headed in Trump's direction, which tons of blind people use. But, we'll struggle on as we always have. Eventually, Windows will decay enough for blind programmers to finally have enough and switch to Linux, and we'll ride that wave as long as we can. And then Tim Cook will retire, some conservative will take his place, and we'll all have to move to Android lol. Would be just our luck.
Accessibility could mostly (completely?) be solved with on-device AI agents, which would be a lot easier than trying to get companies to implement accessibility on their side.
140 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threadAll that being said, they seem like similar principles to me, but I'm not the one throwing around what's racist, and based on your use of it, I guess you'd disagree.
No I’m going to blame the people reducing accessibility for disabled Americans via executive order.
Also, you crossed badly into personal attack here. Please don't do that on HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. You may not owe people who you feel are losers better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In my defense, I’ve been advocating for accessibility in computing for over 20 years, and reading the original post really enraged me as it goes against all I stand for, hence reacting too strongly here.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Moving ADA protected accessibility concerns into the literal DEI departments (I don't mean individual people) is clearly part of that attempt to "harden" themselves from executive orders and top down policy changes.
Indeed the ATF has just blatantly violated the executive order ending DEI programs[1].
Ultimately it's the bureaucracy using accessibility as a shield who are responsible for it being attacked.
What I say is certainly... pithy but I take exception with saying any of it is un-substantive or flamebait.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/22/politics/resistance-trump-lib...
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/atf-accused-of...
If you had posted this later comment originally, it would have been fine, or almost fine—it's probably still too much of a political battle post to be completely fine.
There won't be anyone doing any of that.
Near as I can tell, that is also why the cyber intrusion investigation folks are being targeted to.
If we never test, and there is no one to complain to, then clearly it is not a problem and not happening eh?
It is just as useful for them that court challenges do work (at least against many of the smaller players) - as it gives them a chance to blame the courts, and push for more power.
They aren’t there to actually solve problems (well, most problems anyway). They are there to get more personal power and wealth.
If they can do that by pretending to do what someone needs, while actually not really solving that need and instead sowing the seeds of a bigger mess only they can solve? Awesome.
If some of their supporters get thrown into the meat grinder for that to happen? Meh. As long as they can plausibly blame them for it, anyway.
This, IMO applies to all the major ‘split’ issues - abortion, gun control, immigration, you name it.
One ‘advantage’ too for those in power for those playing this game, is anyone someone ‘on the edge’ of doing legal stuff has to support them and give them even more power to undermine the legal system, since a reversion to the mean will definitely put them in jail.
If the courts just say ‘yeah, whatever Trump says’, then it’s not chaotic at all.
"Ve vill haff order!"
to avoid misunderstanding, here, the 'claimed to be important but is actually insignificant' refers to something that, from the organization's perspective
‘legitimate business purpose’ discrimination has always been allowed, which is why it’s okay to only hire black actors for a role that calls for black actors in a movie, or only pretty young women as strippers, etc.
Also, discrimination like ‘I just don’t like them’.
Illegal discrimination is where the hiring person is discriminated based on a protected class where it is not a legitimate business need [https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/3-who-protecte....]
There are a million different ways to structure these rules however (and actually do hiring) with different entirely predictable outcomes in actual employee race/sex/gender composition. As well as different types of employment environments that when interacting with regional cultural/socialization backgrounds, will result in entirely predictable outcomes in actual employee race/sex/gender/national origin/age compositions.
For example, you aren’t going to find many supermodels working at the local sewer treatment plant. Or blandly ugly people working in the entertainment industry.
However, depending on the organization and size (the federal gov’t has had this since the 70’s, and it’s been expanding over the years to even large companies the last 10ish or so), there is a federal requirement for Affirmative Action as well, where if the company/org, etc. doesn’t have the ‘right amount’ of people who meet course these criteria determined by the department of labor, then there is a presumption that it proves ‘defacto’ illegal discrimination.
There is no need for candidates being discriminated against illegally at that point to show they are being discriminated against (and in fact, they may not actually be discriminated against in any explicit or conscious way) - the mere fact they are not there in a given % of representation is taken of evidence of that discrimination.
That means if a company/organization gets too much attention, then they are required to actually discriminate against other candidates to ensure the outcomes of their hiring and retention roughly match what the DOL would expect. Regardless of the actual circumstances/suitability of their hiring.
That also means if someone is ‘over represented’, then that means they’ll be discriminated against quite consistently and per the department of labor, ‘legally’. It’s essentially a ‘necessary evil’.
The backlash now appears to be targeting anything related to those efforts, nominally under the idea of meritocracy, but eh, that is frankly not a very convincing figleaf. And yes, it will be targeting everyone who isn’t.. well, you can guess.
Our new president is a felon, after all.
“Leopards Eating People's Faces Party refers to a parody of regretful voters who vote for cruel and unjust policies (and politicians) and are then surprised when their own lives become worse as a result. It has been commonly used to parody regretful Brexit and Trump voters.”
The parody here is essentially saying that if you supported the Republicans (Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party) and then you ended up being harmed (leopards ate your face) as a result of their policies that are explicit in their intent to harm people (we will eat people’s faces) despite thinking that you wouldn’t be harmed (“I never thought the leopards would eat __my__ face”) then you are a fool.
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/leopards-eating-peoples-faces...
It seems like it's just an excuse for mostly fine-under-trump White folks to go "welp, don't blame me, I didn't vote for him" to people who are actually impacted by his policies. And they seem to apply it liberally to people who may have never supported him or who belong to demographic groups that statistically voted for him way less than White folks.
And even if they did vote for trump and are now facing the consequences? I still care enough not to laugh at them from the side lines for being the victim of a con man, and so should you.
So many Liberals seem to have been emboldened by losing to Trump a second time into embracing bullying and letting go of what empathy and compassion that they had instead of using the moment to question why their party is so disconnected from so much of the country and why so many who are suffering would fall for Trump's lies instead of Democrats and the status quo.
It's not just that it's wrong to use your anger over a bully being elected as an excuse to become a bully yourself, importantly it's also a garbage strategy for trying to defeat MAGA down the road.
This recent strain of Liberalism and it's compromise is so exhausting. They sell out everything they're supposed to stand for and embrace things like fracking, the lie of migrant crime, they choose to proudly wear the endorsement of people like the Cheneys and expect to win elections by being "diet Republicans"?
It seems like they'll do just about anything instead of actually challenging the systems that cause common folks to suffer.
Where was it?
All I saw were people lecturing "the left" and calling Trump critics hypocrites and blaming them for Trumpism just as you are. Faux outrage over Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" comment - which she was 100% correct about. Not so much as an ounce of self-reflection or awareness, only ever deflection and projection, only ever blaming the other side and acting like victims.
I agree with you 100% about the failures of Liberalism and the Democrats though, but people are well aware of that. Unfortunately the system only affords us two options, and we're forced to choose the lesser evil. As far as bullying goes, I mean... my side isn't the one sending out ICE agents to kidnap brown people or stripping gay and trans people of their rights or waging war against "equality" and "woke."
Maybe you should be asking the people who keep voting for the systems causing common folks to suffer to challenge them. You won't though, that isn't why you're here.
And are you really surprised by that shift? Many in this country are suffering, and bought in to Obama's "HOPE" and "CHANGE" and got next to nothing for it. In this election Harris tried to sell herself as simply "Biden but younger" instead of presenting transformative ideas to help people - and in a choice between continued suffering or the promise of something better of course many will choose the potential for something better - even if the person presenting it is a deplorable con man.
And yes, I will absolutely call out the so-called Left in this country for doing too little, for being hypocrites, for fighting for the status quo rather than for their constituents. Sure, Republicans are worse, but Democrats keep handing them free elections by being utterly tepid.
And, for the record, "the people who keep voting for the systems causing common folks to suffer" includes anyone voting for Democrats too.
From the left, yes. Nary a peep from the right. A trickle compared to a torrent. Let's not pretend there was any sort of significant backlash against Trump on that side. If they really wanted Trump gone they could have gotten rid of him.
>and in a choice between continued suffering or the promise of something better of course many will choose the potential for something better - even if the person presenting it is a deplorable con man.
Except the people who voted for the deplorable con man were never going to vote for Harris, or Biden, or any Democrat regardless of what they offered, ever.
I think your criticisms of the Democrats are spot on, but I am curious what you think a Democratic Party platform that Trumpists would have accepted in 2024 would actually look like.
Also you can say "Republicans are worse" but you're in here implying the anger of the right and the choices they've made are perfectly justified as a response to the left, but you aren't willing to extend the same sympathy to the left. You're calling the left racist for taking some schadenfreude (which is weird given that Trump voters are almost exclusively white) when the right has literally run on schadenfreude and racism for a decade.
Trump voters are not automatons. They are (presumably) adults, with agency and free will (whatever that is) and are morally and ethically responsible for the decisions they make and the consequences of their actions. Were they lied to? Yes. Populism is, at its core, a deceitful and manipulative ideology. That doesn't mean they get let off the hook, they can get just as much as they give.
This gets at the truth.
To generalize: if people can't get a win, they'll settle for blame. Pointing the finger at others feels pretty good. Whereas the soul-searching you speak of is suffering, especially for those invested in ideology.
IMHO, this coping is inevitable. We have no leaders who can admit our fault, nor do we longer share a set of teachings to make sense of where we went astray. What we do seem to have in abundance is rage, which fuels the comforting political fantasies we're witnessing today.
By the by, is it possible to see where a post is (or isn't) in the numbered list from within the post?
Edit: Oh wait. It has since been flagged. Must have been too political or something, because we all know the tech scene is especially apolitical right now.
Edit: Including this troll that only emerged well after the post was flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BroFrFrNoCap
Or maybe it's your alt? Couldn't downvote this post though could you?
I was not aware of this. Thanks.
If they wanted to, they could have focused on DEI, but they intentionally and explicitly added accessibility to the conversation and are impacting those programs directly.
To be clear I believe those perspectives are abhorrent, but they have an understandable genesis that's based on a real fear that has been stoked for political gain.
- disabled people were kept completely out of discussion. The only time I've worked with a disabled developer was in a company that did not have any DEI
- lots of policies boil down to "what skin color are you", which is pure racism, except you're not allowed to point that out
- "it's okay to be anyone you want to be, unless you're a white straight man, we don't like those"
- lots of annoying surface-level events related to LGBT groups without addressing any actual issues these people face
- "affirmative action" aka "discrimination is good when we do it"
- laser focus on women's issues, and then surprised Pikachu face that men listen to Andrew Tate because nobody else tells them they're valuable
- language police and forcing phrases that would've belonged to a comedy sketch 10 years prior. Expressions like "what are your pronouns" and "uterus-bodied people" just don't resonate with the general public
- nail in the coffin: bully attitude. "Either you accept our viewpoint or we'll bully you into doing so". This completely shut down the societal discussion about equality. Democrats thoughts that the discussion about equality was done because the problem was solved, while in reality people were afraid of speaking up, and secretly voted for Trump
Now whether it's right to have those or not to "balance" any sense of perceived structural inequity is a different question altogether. But I can totally see how a white straight male would feel discriminated against.
This is why people want to get rid of DEI. Aside from all their obnoxious rhetoric, they don’t even accomplish the thing they say they’re supposed to do.
I know people will claim that now nobody will buy any screen reader software, but it doesn’t sound like anyone was doing that before either.
Have you ever dealt with government procurement?
His problem wasn't that he wanted something to help him with his disability, his problem was that he wanted something as part of a government job.
Getting rid of DEI won't change the way government procurement works.
‘Veteran owned’, ‘Black owned’, ‘Women owned’, or the real meal ticket - ‘Black Women Veteran owned’ is a huge thing in gov’t procurement. To the point where if you aren’t those things, you’d better be a major (near monopoly) provider and have your own congressman or two ensuring you’ll get bids.
If they remove the affirmative action requirement in contractors, it’s going to be a bloodbath.
Not so much from an actual ‘which company does what’, but rather in all the various borderline (or actual) fraudulent corporate structures that have been setup to game the system.
This has been going on (and well understood) for at least 30 years that I personally know about.
I'm not claiming this is the only problem with government contracting, but it's an example of exactly the kind of policy which leads to the source article's complaint. The author may have identified a vendor with a cheaper and better product, but if they let everyone go around making such decisions how would they know whether they're hitting the quota?
The numbers I’ve seen some of these departments get paid is mind boggling. It’s possible to both value these principles and yet be in disgust at what a grift so much of it has become.
I yearn for a proper Conservative Party to bring some sanity back to the world. I wish that the Christian right would actually follow the teaching of Jesus that they claim.
I don't agree with a lot of what the Democrats do, but they generally do what they do out of a place of good and Republicans are working out of a place of hate. And that matters. Tearing it all down and hurting people just isn't something I feel that I can support, no matter what other things they do that I might agree with or might help me.
From my perspective, both sides engage in it just as much as the other, and it's getting worse because people are choosing to respond in kind rather than take the higher ground. I voted for neither party in the last cycle, and it's likely to stay that way for me unless things dramatically change.
Could you give an actual example? This isn't some kind of gotcha, I'm genuinely curious. As a non-American the Democratic Party seem pathologically obsessed with reaching across the aisle to the moderate right winger.
Honestly, though, I'm more curious about the examples that led you to believe they reach across the aisle. Neither party does, both are firmly encamped, and both routinely resort to verbal attacks based on party affiliation.
That said, ignoring the loudest voices in the room, especially when they're pointed at you is very hard to do.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/nasa-moves-swiftly-to-...
This article has some context, but note that the heads of several agencies were all compelled to send the same thing out.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...
DEI, DEIA, Environmental Justice
Sounds like it's to end or force underground affirmative action programs for bipoc, disabled, and climate change
A11y, good-faith DEI, equality/equity programs were conceived in the AoC and then started to get implemented in the AoI, but in the AoA it will be rolled back with extreme prejudice (at least in USA) with plethora unintended consequences as laid out by OP. While people gormlessly argue about the myth of meritocracy, there will come a certain point where only those who can't recognize (or actively dismiss/excuse) N*zi salutes will be the only ones conveniently not suspected of being "legacy DEI" hires.
Relevant quote: “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
He still hasn't even denied it, has he?
That's fine with me, but you should be aware that you're breaking the site guidelines in doing so: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
> Why should he deny it when he is obviously not a Nazi?
Why would it matter whether he is a Nazi, when the question is whether he did a Nazi salute? You and I aren't Nazis, yet we could both do a Nazi salute right now.
I also reject your premise that he's "obviously not a Nazi" - you'd have a great point if he didn't agree with Nazi talking points[0], and didn't give both platform and reach to Nazis, and so many other Nazi-adjacent fauxpas over the last months. But that's not relevant to the discussion, so let's not retread those grounds, okay?
[0]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1724908287471272299
I can't find any other reason why you think a Nazi salute is that sloppy, as otherwise you see people do Nazi salutes all the time. Nazi salutes are illegal in parts of the world, if you are going to prosecute someone for it then it needs to be way clearer marked than what he did.
If he combined it with "Heil Hitler", or did it with a stiff upper body and/or left the arm staying in final position for a few seconds like fascists liked, then sure, but he did neither of those things.
Why else would people want to call that a Nazi salute when it is so far from the real thing? It is such a strong accusation to make, and similar motions are so easy and common that you should assume innocence's here unless it is extremely clear.
If you ask "why do they want to call it that" instead of "why do they call it that" you're already not asking in good faith.
> It is such a strong accusation to make
I would call it an observation rather than an accusation.
"you only see it because you want to see it", now that is an accusation, one you have no argument for other than what could be considered a skill issue ("can't find any other reason") and against nobody can defend themselves.
> similar motions are so easy and common
Show me a similar motion that is common.
And then there's Musk's support of the AfD, and how he's calling everyone who doesn't think he's funny a "leftist extremist". He, in word and deed, is a fascist. The salute doesn't even add anything meaningful. It still is that salute however.
Musk just showed it there. Fascist loved their stiffness, by tilting his head and curving his body like that it is clearly not a fascist salute, if you look at photos of people doing it they wouldn't disgrace Hitler by doing it like that.
> If you ask "why do they want to call it that" instead of "why do they call it that" you're already not asking in good faith.
Ok you are right, I should have assumed you were ignorant instead of malicious, which I started out with. But when you said that you want to see it as a Nazi salute even when evidence that it wasn't, then it there isn't any other option left. You wont find footage of Nazis doing the salute like that, since they didn't.
And Hitler did his own versions that was just waving back, that doesn't mean that waving is a Hitler salute. But you see everyone else there standing stiffly and straight, not at all Like Musk.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Bundesar...
> And then there's Musk's support of the AfD, and how he's calling everyone who doesn't think he's funny a "leftist extremist". He, in word and deed, is a fascist. The salute doesn't even add anything meaningful. It still is that salute however.
So you were already biased into seeing Musk as a Nazi, that makes you a terrible judge of whether this is a Nazi salute. This answers my question.
That's circular reasoning. So no. The rest is just smearing me in this weirdly stilted way that seems to go with this territory.
Imagine the military salute, but you change it by curving your body and tilting your head, now its no longer the military salute. Same thing applies to nazi salute. Trying to see it anyway is just bias speaking.
Edit: And if you ask the experts, ADL, they say it wasn't a nazi salute. Since Musk is an antisemitic Nazi according to you, so someone ADL would be very biased against, we there have strong evidence it wasn't.
So I just wondered why you rejected such strong evidence against your assertion that it was a nazi salute. But now I know.
For crying out loud...
The ADL disagrees with you:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/world/europe/elon-musk-ro...
If you want to argue that politicians have made the same gesture, you need to provide videos showing the whole gesture.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
> Is Musk an antisemite? People, actually, it's worse - he doesn't care whatsoever. Elon, father of "little X" as he described his freezing cold son to me, literally does not care. He was unmoved by the experience. For Gidon, to be in the place where is father, Ernst, died on a death march - whether shot by the side of the road or having simply collapsed - was a huge deal. Elon did not care. He was about his press junket and his bodyguards. I was ten feet from him as he posed for the cameras of his entourage. He was utterly detached. He cared about how he looked. When he placed a wreath at Auschwitz and Gideon was overlooked, he walked away with the cameras whirring. This is Elon Musk. A sociopath, if there ever was one. To deduce, from this visit, that he is a friend of the Jews is desperately naive.
-- Julie Gray
Previous policy was:
> agencies must include a link to the accessibility statement in the sitewide footer, per OMB guidance on Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience (M-23-22)
> Per M-23-22, agencies should not link to digital accessibility statements from a sub-page, such as a “Website Policies & Notices”. Agencies must link directly to the digital accessibility statement from the website footer
https://www.section508.gov/manage/laws-and-policies/website-...
ADA was used as a weapon against small businesses and caused a lot of products to change in unwanted ways for ADA compliance, leaving those who are only purchasing for personal use without good options, so I understand the opposition. Hopefully this leads to a more commonsense approach to accessibility instead of mandated bureaucratic box-ticking.
First, DEI became DEIA under Biden, see the executive order [1] (now worryingly removed from the site). That had some logic as a mission creep which is always welcomed by the bureaucrats.
Second, when the Trump decided to dismantle DEI, keeping "DEIA" didn't make sense, and surgically removing DEI from DEIA is not his style. So it was removed altogether, and the bureaucrats cared more about going with pendulum swing more than caring about any unintended effects, so anything associated with DEI was removed without any care about accessibility.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250120152648/https://www.white...
At least Apple isn't getting rid of their accessibility program. But I fear what this will do as a signal to other companies, particularly apps like Doordash, which some people rely on. Oh, and can't forget Facebook, which is headed in Trump's direction, which tons of blind people use. But, we'll struggle on as we always have. Eventually, Windows will decay enough for blind programmers to finally have enough and switch to Linux, and we'll ride that wave as long as we can. And then Tim Cook will retire, some conservative will take his place, and we'll all have to move to Android lol. Would be just our luck.