Category: Tech

Challenging Jakob Nielsen’s claim on accessibility

Renowned user experience guru Jakob Nielsen published a post offering generative AI as an alternative to accessibility measures which he claimed to have failed to make computers usable for disabled users. He’s been criticized for the way he offered his thoughts which can easily be taken as dismissing accessibility altogether.

Nielsen claims that he sees all computer users equally, not making distinctions based on their ability to use them so user and interface experience designers:

Where I have always differed from the accessibility movement is that I consider users with disabilities to be simply users. This means that usability and task performance are the goals. It’s not a goal to adhere to particular design standards promulgated by a special interest group that has failed to achieve its mission.

He then offers two reasons why he thinks accessibility has failed. The first is that “accessibility is too expensive for most companies” so instead of making an effort to meet the needs of disabled users, companies either forego accessibility altogether or follow a checklist of items without verifying the results with actual disabled people. That last point actually contravenes the evaluation steps on accessibility work in the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Involving actual disabled users is one of the final steps towards compliance with WAI.

The second reason is, “accessibility is doomed to create a substandard user experience” and then continues to dismiss the present approach to auditory interface because it poorly translates a two dimensional visual user interface designed for sighted people.

At the end of his argument he offers generative AI as the core of interface generator which will present a visual interface for sighted users and auditory interface not based on the visual version, for blind users.

He may well be correct in how AI in the future may play a substantial role in presenting computing interfaces based on the user’s conditions but that day has yet to arrive and it may take some time.

The current accessibility solutions for disabled users based on W3C standards are indeed interpretive of the visual interface instead of being fully designed for non sighted users, which makes them less ideal, but for such a renowned leader in experience design to dismiss the efforts entirely may lead to companies taking his advice on face value and use that as an excuse to not make the effort and investment towards accessibility and assistive technologies at all. That’s harmful.

Per Axbom, the Swedish designer and thought leader on human centered design, has a much more comprehensive breakdown of his objections over Nielsen’s proposal. Worth reading in its entirety. The crux of his argument is Nielsen is advocating for radically customized individual interfaces, not just general interface approaches for certain groups of people with different abilities. He said distinct experiences for individuals “is an extreme take with very little foundation in feasibility or desirability”.

Update 7 March:

I just came across several more reactions and responses to Nielsen’s ignorant claims about digital accessibility and they are livid.

Designer and accessibility advocate Eric W. Bailey called Nielsen “an asshole” in a very short post, but he also included links to a handful of other people’s thoughts about the matter that you might be interested to read.

A much more diplomatic response came from Léonie Watson, a board member at the W3C, telling Nielsen to rethink his views on accessibility, based on her own disability and how she’s managed to experience and contribute to the development of the web as a blind person.

In fact, just a couple of weeks prior to Nielsen’s post, she wrote a post about how the leading AI tools would present misinformation or incomplete info, skip rules and guidelines, and even fail when tasked with delivering “all the code that I need to create a set of accessible tabs for a website”.

So just like with any information delivered by AI, we still need to verify their validity, whether they’re factual, whether they work, whether they’re applicable, etc. Maybe one day that won’t be as urgent, but for now, especially in delivering universal digital experience, AI still needs human supervision and oversight to minimize mistakes. Which is ironic because we rely on digital tools to minimize our own.

Wise forced to restrict use in Indonesia to fund transfers only

The money transfer service Wise sent out an email to customers with registered Indonesian addresses on their accounts telling them that they must empty their accounts before 23 May 2024.

From then on, Wise customers in Indonesia will not be able to store, receive, or send money from their Wise accounts. They will be limited to using Wise only as a wire transfer service and nothing else due to local regulations governing financial transactions.

The company is advising customers with Indonesian addresses to inform their benefactors or clients that they can use Wise to arrange transfers to their bank accounts instead.

While fund transfer is the core of the service and Wise is a licensed remittance facilitator, it offers a wider range of services including an account that people can use to store balance and internationally send and receive money, international remittance, and issuing debit cards for international transactions.

In a lot of ways Wise is similar to PayPal as they allow customers to receive, send, and store funds on their accounts but in Indonesia Wise doesn’t appear to have a license to operate as a bank or digital wallet provider which means they’re not permitted to allow customers to store funds in a Wise account.

It would be … wise for the company to acquire the wallet license if they wish to offer their full services in Indonesia. Until they manage to secure that license, their services will remain limited to remittances, just like Western Union.

Google Testing Removal of News Tab

With Australia, Canada, and Indonesia passing laws or regulations requiring platforms to pay for news links and the US having introduced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act last year, removing the News tab looks like Google’s response to avoid having to pay link tax to media companies.

The News tab is only missing for a limited group of users for the moment. It is a test after all and I still see it when I use Google search.

Artifact News Reader is Being Shut Down

I’ve enjoyed using Artifact and it’s upsetting that it’s being shut down because it really seemed like it was on its way to be a really good news reader. It’s often the first or second app I open to kickstart the day. I like that Artifact lets you load an AI-generated article summary if you don’t have time to read the full story.

Artifact at some point added social elements but people just didn’t see it that way because it’s a news reader first and foremost. It also let you publish your own takes of the news linking to them, making it a blog platform. This part I enjoyed a lot. I didn’t post too many times but enough to keep me writing my thoughts on things that bugged me.

They said Artifact will remain up until til the end of February. I’ll be spending some time to republish those posts here and backdating them accordingly.

Ultimately for a blogger it all comes back to running your own space if you want to keep your published thoughts available to read on the web. Maybe one day I’ll eventually decide to have my own self hosted blog and social web instance like it’s always meant to be and move everything to that because platforms like there, including Medium and Tumblr, may one day shut down if they can’t justify keeping them around whether through lack of revenue or something else.

For my daily news reading there’s always Flipboard which I also still use regularly but I’m going to miss Artifact.

Shutting down Artifact

Media Companies are Suckers for Punishments 

I don’t understand why the media keep insisting on posting to this platform when they themselves admit that traffic from social media links have been dropping, and especially on X, they don’t bring significant audience.

The disdain that Musk has over media companies, especially ones that don’t kowtow to his whims, as well as his calls to publish directly on his platform or be deprioritized, should warrant enough reasons for them to cease using the platform as a traffic funnel.

They are not welcomed nor do they gain anything from staying around. As if having article titles removed from posts was not enough of a sign that Musk isn’t keen on driving traffic to news sites.

There’s no shortage of options for content distribution these days so pulling back from one  isn’t going to make a lot of difference.

iPhone Design Chief Joins Jony Ive’s LoveFrom

Losing 20 designers to Jony Ive must be a significant blow to Apple but it’s certainly a testament to Ive’s leadership as a design executive. And now the tech giant loses another senior design executive. 

What Ive and his team built at Apple are unquestionably iconic, from the groundbreaking original iMac and its weird puck mouse to the oddly designed Magic Mouse and Lightning Apple Pencil, but with Ive’s and his former team members’ departures, Apple has to rebuilt the design team with new leadership and direction.

With almost none of Ive’s former charges left in the company, Apple’s award winning Ive era is over and if they want to return to that level, it’s going to take a lot of work.

It’s unfortunate that Apple is no longer a design focused company the way it used to be in the 90s to the 2010s having reorganized the team under Operations instead of its own vertical under the CEO but they’ve decided to take this path following Ive’s departure.

This is already a new era at Apple where product design is more iterative and functional than inspirational and if they aim to reclaim their crown as one of the most iconic industrial design companies, it will require a new batch of outstanding designers and design leadership.

Senator Elizabeth Warren Targets Apple for Shutting Out Beeper

Sorry Senator, nobody is stopping anyone from using alternative messaging apps such as Signal, WhatsApp, Messenger (which apparently had just been rebuilt using Signal’s end to end secure messaging protocol), Telegram, Snapchat, or any other cross platform ones that are available on both the App Store and Google Play. Shutting out Beeper from iMessage isn’t anti-competitive.

It may be inconvenient that many Americans are on iMessage while their Android friends and colleagues are being shown as unsecured green bubbles but the rest of the world don’t have this problem because they use other messaging apps.

There is no antitrust problem here. Just because people refuse to use clearly available alternatives doesn’t make it an antitrust problem.

If the Senator thinks iOS and Android users should be able to communicate securely without having to download other apps, maybe the Senator should consider finding out why the RCS protocol is not inherently secure? Google only recently made RCS secure on Android and it’s had a complicated past.

Will the Senator admonish Microsoft for not allowing Google Docs users to collaborate directly on Office docs and vice versa, or am I giving her a terrible idea?

Nothing is Bringing iMessage to its Android Phone

This is also called introducing MITM (man in the middle) attack vector into your Apple ID and iCloud accounts thereby opening up potential breaches to your account.

“Would you like to compromise your account privacy security? Tap here to let your account be accessed by some random authentication server not maintained nor authorized by Apple somewhere”

TV can be Educational but Social Media Likely Harms Mental Health

Many people equate screen time or gadget use with addiction to smoking because they’re perceived as bringing far more harmful effects on health than any benefit but I’m a strong believer of context and what people (including kids) consume or use on their screens matter so much more than just the use itself because these devices can help if used the right way.

Separately, kids and adults also need to learn about control and ways to respond to certain triggers to reduce harmful effects.

Zuckerberg Says Threads has Almost 100 Million Monthly Users

The reports of Threads’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Just under 100 million monthly users in three months since launch is one hell of a feat. 

Is the claim dubious? Anyone can certainly question that since they have yet to show additional information such as the highly coveted “unregretted minutes” a certain other billionaire CEO seems to prefer, but Business Insider was reporting just a week ago that Threads has 33 million daily active users so 100 million active users in a month does sound plausible.

But what about all those people who told us that Threads is a graveyard, that nothing is happening because their posts get no engagement? Well, are they the ones that logged in back in July or August once or twice and then return a few months later without posting anything in between? They have no idea what’s happening. How much interaction have they done in Threads, did they just post and expect responses or have they interacted with people? Have they been asking their friends and followers to check out the place and stick around for a while?

Threads have added so many features and functions between launch period and now that it’s become a full fledged social network that feels like it’s been around for years. 

Sure, search is still limited to certain languages and markets, there’s no trending list, no lists, and no proper analytics, but there are separate feeds for Following and For You, can easily swap between accounts, log in on the web, post voice notes, follow every account mentioned in a single post all at once (makes Follow Fridays easier), quote posts, see basic stats per post, see quote posts and likes, follow and get notified of updates to any post for 24 hours, you can edit your posts and replies within five minutes of posting, and so on.

It’s still missing an API, however, which prevents many organizations, institutions, public figures, and businesses from using it with their social media admin tools. Perhaps that’s a big reason people think they can’t use it yet, but at nearly 100 million monthly users, it’s not a place for people to jump back in after months of absence and 

ask if there’s anyone there, because it’s a thriving place.

That thing about the news? The one where Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said they’re not prioritizing or giving a leg up to news because they prefer people talk about other things? Yeah, that’s not a thing. News is absolutely what people share and talk about on Threads. Multiple major media organizations have found that Threads deliver far more traffic and engagement than expected.

Mosseri also reiterated today that they are working on landing in the EU as well as establishing early connections to ActivityPub and therefore federating or connecting to platforms like WordPress, Mastodon, and micro.blog in the next few months, not to mention the all important trends list that people have been shouting about. 

There’s also evidence of more work already being done within the app but not yet ready for release, so while Threads may not be the place for real time updates yet, it is definitely sprinting forward.