aleidk
@aleidk@fedi.alecodes.page
As someone who always tries to do things "in the right way", I totally get this feeling...
But I also think, where do we draw the line where caring starts to affect you in negatives ways?
I have a personal experience about this: a while ago I read an open letter from a blind person to web developers, in a nutshell saying something among the lines of "in a world that everyday is more connected, and where you need to go to the internet to solve some basic human needs, we depend on you, our lives is in your hands" (pardon the inaccuracy, I just remember the main idea).
As a web dev, I felt personally targeted, it is my job to create websites accessible for everyone, but not just as something I need to do, but as something I want to do.
My mom is a disabled person, and worst, is an invisible disability, I saw her go through her worst times, and saw her having to fight or resign for what it should be the bare minimum for her, because nobody cares. And I can only imagine what she had/has to go through on a daily basis as I had some injuries of similar nature to her disability, it was the worst pain I had ever experienced in my life, and I perfectly knew it was just a fraction of what she felt constantly.
So when I saw that I can make the life of some people easier by doing my job right, it felt only natural to do so, I started to learn and apply accessibility features in the applications I made, but this only went so far. I started to take more time to develop the pages by implementing features that are not visible to the main public, I started to get behind schedule and the poor management of my Project Manager didn't helped.
So in order to be able to meet the deadlines and protect myself from the increasing stress levels that started to affect my personal life, I had to start prioritizing features, and sadly, accessibility wasn't one of them.
Can you blame me for not making the web page accessible and excluding people for beign able to use it? Of course you should. Can you blame me for doing what it's best for my mental health though? Can you blame me for prioritizing me and my family over some extrangers on the internet?
It's sad that if accessibility is not a client requirement, it's not taking into account...
I still try to include accessibility whenever I can, but sadly, I cannot care about it when my mental integrity is at stake.
This is a really interesting topic, because there's no solution, there's no right or wrong answer, there's not one person at fault (well, mostly), just different points of view, different realities.
I doubt that a place like the one described in the article [where everyone cares] really exists, at least it is very hard for me to believe it exists for what I have seen where I grew and live. But I learned one thing over time: kindness is usually repaired with kindness.
Be nice to other people, be kind, be understanding, and maybe with enough people doing this, we can start caring...