anonymous dude named Ben. I work in accessibility at Salesforce, but
there are very few of us blindies, so mentioning Salesforce, or
blindness would definitely identify me.
I work in
accessibility at a big tech company. Everyone is all a flutter over the
DEI executive order including DEIA programs, where the A is
accessibility. I have to hold my tongue and just let people rant, but
the truth is, no matter the spin, that the executive order was meant to
cut DEI programs that gave preferential treatment, over merit
in employment. Since everyone knew this was coming though, they started
adding other things to the end, like Belonging, or in this case
Accessibility.
I'm pretty irritated by this,
not at the administration, but at the DEI whackos that decided to loop
disabled people into their misguided crusade for alphabet people. Not
that disabled people don't have their fair share of alphabet people, but
we were for the most part out of the DEI argument, especially when
things really ramped up in 2020. This attempt though is to build a
coalition of so-called under represented groups, so they can make more
noise in the media. They know that programs for accessibility are built
into other legislation, which an executive order won't effect, so they
think that by adding accessibility, the courts will force them to
maintain that program. The crappy part of the situation is that some
people have taken this to heart, and have started to shut down
accessibility efforts, even though this EO has nothing to do with
providing accessible web pages, or any sort of accessibility to those
who need it.
I have heard, that the VA has
decided to suspend all their Accessibility programs due to the EO. If
true, it is just more political grandstanding, of the same order as
Tiktok shutting down for less than 24 hours. They hope to get the
disability folks to stand up and fight for this, and hope to slide their
other DEI nonsense in under the wire. If they truly cared about
accessibility, they would work to ensure that this EO doesn't cover
those efforts, and continue to provide services to the people they claim
they represent. But instead, they have chosen to grandstand, so that
they can say that disabled veterans are suffering.
And
for the disability "community", this is why you shouldn't be waving the
accessibility flag around all the time, for things that don't need it. I
don't want to tie my future to these DEI nut jobs, because in the end,
they're not going to include us. We're doing just fine with out them,
and we don't need to be the ones opening the door, just so they can slam
it in our face because we don't have enough letters in our alphabet
soup.