Opportunity: Diversity audit for the open-source FedeProxy project

[aschrijver]

I will be tagging various people to gauge their interest for this initiative. I have already approached some on the Fediverse and notified @Sarigama and @PaulaFairphone.

This topic greatly interests me, especially because I feel that Diversity / Inclusion should go much deeper than what most organizations consider to be ‘diverse’ (Diversity is a hot & trendy topic these days, and you see a lot of “diversity-washing” where having a mixed team of males and females is already enough, and mostly for marketing purposes).

Quoting from an earlier discussion between @Birdie and @ibaldo highlights yet another much underappreciated diversity aspect:

@Birdie

To build in real inclusion from the ground up involves genuine and early stakeholder engagement so that the product design doesn’t just respond to a preconceived idea of ‘average user’ but instead considers most unlikely user with a view to making the product accessible for everyone who would like to use it.

In a broader sense we are talking ‘social model of disability’.
In the same way that people in wheelchairs fought to have councils recognise the need to retrofit kerbs with ramps at road crossings, so do neuronormative people design systems built on assumptions about behaviour and values.

Neurodiverse people think and respond differently in a range of ways which can mean that what is a logical and serviceable UX for the majority can actively cause harm to those trying to participate.
I believe it is lived experience of that harm which contributes to neurodiverse people being able to see unexpected outcomes more easily than others by becoming attuned to potential ‘collateral damage’ pain points.

As with visual, auditory and cognitive impairment, contrast is used to provide clear visual cues which assist the user to work comfortably through a decision tree or process flow. Additionally neurodiverse people can experience pain points as emotional triggers which affect executive function.

I am still looking for qualitative studies on this topic to either confirm or refute my suspicion that most often cost assessments fail to take into account downstream costs of dissatisfied customers and their impact on staffing retention. I would love to have more than personal observation to back up that claim.

I’d also like to know if the ratio of neurodiverse/neuronormative people affected by this type of pain point is proportionally representative.

And there are many more…

For anyone interested to broaden their horizon and expertise on Diversity I can provide an easy tip: Join the Fediverse!

(PS. Here’s a fediverse call for attention to this opportunity by the FedeProxy initiator)