The JS community on Twitter is dead.
Something something about once you're a nazi bar you're always a nazi bar.
A disclaimer to start this out: If you feel like I'm talking about you and this has you in your feelings, yes, I am.
This weekend's discourse around accessibility validated my decisions to not carry out work there. I largely stopped posting on Twitter many months ago; minus the random check in, to reply to a peer's post, or just throw out a few likes. Since moving to Mastodon and Bluesky, I get my fix of posts and interactions with the web, disabled, and accessibility communities I still love and activists I follow.
Isn't it curious that the only time the JS community on Twitter rallies around accessibility discussions is when they get to feel the victim for being "shamed" for not caring about accessibility? Strange how that works.
I don't want to link specific tweets because I honestly don't care to send people into that. If you saw the announcement of v0.dev, you can probably find them on your own. That is, if Twitter lets you since they seem to mostly surface the scum of the earth verified account replies. I touched on this discourse a little in this post about ai generated UI if you want to go hunting. You'll probably have seen some of the larger tech accounts in the JS world mention it also.
Isn't it curious that the only time the JS community on Twitter rallies around accessibility discussions is when they get to feel the victim for being "shamed" for not caring about accessibility? Strange how that works.
This is the current state of the JS community on Twitter #
We're at this point:
- Some new alpha tool that impacts user interfaces is announced to the JS community? The accessibility community shows up with respectful feedback. Seems perfectly normal since alpha is the perfect time to get feedback.
- Accessibility advocate shows up with reasoned feedback and requests transparency and accountability? Misogynists, and nazis show up.
"Accessibility echo chamber", "accessibility shamers" were some of the nicer terms I saw thrown around amongst people arguing that disabled people were not worth the work of making software accessible and other disgusting replies.
What are you doing? #
If you're a member of the JS community on social media, specifically on Twitter, what are you doing? Not only did I not see anyone from this specific company disavow this type of talk (I honestly don't care to check these few days later because I saw enough), others were reaching as far as possible to basically apologize for them.
If you found yourself watching this weekends "drama" as some of you are calling it and saying any of the following:
- "Yes, well nothing can be 100% accessible" or
- "Gee it is just an alpha software, surely you can let them slide" or
- "golly, well look at all these accessibility issues in this OTHER software I found" or
- using your verified Twitter account to post your essay on how "accessibility is actually really hard!" when you rarely talk about accessibility except when you feel like somebody is shaming you because you as a white man never learned what it's like to get feedback
Then, yes. You are also a part of the problem in this discourse. Your "well actually" posts are just going to get co-opted by the people that think "well actually ableism is acceptable". Take a hard look at the people that are cheering you on for your well meaning replies.
You're also missing the point entirely and you're jumping through hoops to ignore the fact that an accessibility advocate nicely brought up feedback in a public forum where it is entirely appropriate and expected to do so and a large amount of replies were, at best, incredibly toxic and at worst, espousing nazi rhetoric.
It's because somebody had the nerve to even bring up accessibility that people got in their feelings.
If you find yourself thinking "but I rarely see stuff like this, this is a minority and not indicitave of what it's like here" please understand that you are probably in a position to easily keep your head in the sand.
If you think "But I'm a member of the JS community that is predominantly on Twitter and I'm an accessibility advocate" then why didn't you show up in support of the very normal and reasonable feedback and leave it at that? Why didn't you bring up any of the accessibility features you'd have liked to see included? None of the feedback regarding accessibility that I saw was mean or attacking anybody. It's because somebody had the nerve to even bring up accessibility that people got in their feelings.
Why aren't you using other platforms where a lot of accessibility advocates moved to and also doing your community work there? I've seen lots of folks who I would say are part of the JS community cross post on Mastodon, where I generally feel like there are more web standards and accessibility people consistently posting and having fruitful discussions about how to make the web better, in addition to Twitter, where a large part of the people who want their educational content still live.
The cynic in me understands that the very "bad" people are important to paying your bills at the end of the month. Or, they're who make you feel popular in the web community. Maybe think about that.
This is what is left of the JS community on Twitter.