Feeling Targeted: Executive Order Ending Wasteful DEIA Efforts
hartmans.dreamwidth.org
hartmans.dreamwidth.org
At least Apple isn't getting rid of their accessibility program. But I fear what this will do as a signal to other companies, particularly apps like Doordash, which some people rely on. Oh, and can't forget Facebook, which is headed in Trump's direction, which tons of blind people use. But, we'll struggle on as we always have. Eventually, Windows will decay enough for blind programmers to finally have enough and switch to Linux, and we'll ride that wave as long as we can. And then Tim Cook will retire, some conservative will take his place, and we'll all have to move to Android lol. Would be just our luck.
Previous policy was:
> agencies must include a link to the accessibility statement in the sitewide footer, per OMB guidance on Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience (M-23-22)
> Per M-23-22, agencies should not link to digital accessibility statements from a sub-page, such as a “Website Policies & Notices”. Agencies must link directly to the digital accessibility statement from the website footer
https://www.section508.gov/manage/laws-and-policies/website-...
By the by, is it possible to see where a post is (or isn't) in the numbered list from within the post?
Edit: Oh wait. It has since been flagged. Must have been too political or something, because we all know the tech scene is especially apolitical right now.
Edit: Including this troll that only emerged well after the post was flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BroFrFrNoCap
Or maybe it's your alt? Couldn't downvote this post though could you?
I was not aware of this. Thanks.
If they wanted to, they could have focused on DEI, but they intentionally and explicitly added accessibility to the conversation and are impacting those programs directly.
To be clear I believe those perspectives are abhorrent, but they have an understandable genesis that's based on a real fear that has been stoked for political gain.
- disabled people were kept completely out of discussion. The only time I've worked with a disabled developer was in a company that did not have any DEI
- lots of policies boil down to "what skin color are you", which is pure racism, except you're not allowed to point that out
- "it's okay to be anyone you want to be, unless you're a white straight man, we don't like those"
- lots of annoying surface-level events related to LGBT groups without addressing any actual issues these people face
- "affirmative action" aka "discrimination is good when we do it"
- laser focus on women's issues, and then surprised Pikachu face that men listen to Andrew Tate because nobody else tells them they're valuable
- language police and forcing phrases that would've belonged to a comedy sketch 10 years prior. Expressions like "what are your pronouns" and "uterus-bodied people" just don't resonate with the general public
- nail in the coffin: bully attitude. "Either you accept our viewpoint or we'll bully you into doing so". This completely shut down the societal discussion about equality. Democrats thoughts that the discussion about equality was done because the problem was solved, while in reality people were afraid of speaking up, and secretly voted for Trump
Now whether it's right to have those or not to "balance" any sense of perceived structural inequity is a different question altogether. But I can totally see how a white straight male would feel discriminated against.
All that being said, they seem like similar principles to me, but I'm not the one throwing around what's racist, and based on your use of it, I guess you'd disagree.
No I’m going to blame the people reducing accessibility for disabled Americans via executive order.
Also, you crossed badly into personal attack here. Please don't do that on HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. You may not owe people who you feel are losers better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
In my defense, I’ve been advocating for accessibility in computing for over 20 years, and reading the original post really enraged me as it goes against all I stand for, hence reacting too strongly here.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Moving ADA protected accessibility concerns into the literal DEI departments (I don't mean individual people) is clearly part of that attempt to "harden" themselves from executive orders and top down policy changes.
Indeed the ATF has just blatantly violated the executive order ending DEI programs[1].
Ultimately it's the bureaucracy using accessibility as a shield who are responsible for it being attacked.
What I say is certainly... pithy but I take exception with saying any of it is un-substantive or flamebait.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/22/politics/resistance-trump-lib...
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/atf-accused-of...
If you had posted this later comment originally, it would have been fine, or almost fine—it's probably still too much of a political battle post to be completely fine.
There won't be anyone doing any of that.
Near as I can tell, that is also why the cyber intrusion investigation folks are being targeted to.
If we never test, and there is no one to complain to, then clearly it is not a problem and not happening eh?
It is just as useful for them that court challenges do work (at least against many of the smaller players) - as it gives them a chance to blame the courts, and push for more power.
They aren’t there to actually solve problems (well, most problems anyway). They are there to get more personal power and wealth.
If they can do that by pretending to do what someone needs, while actually not really solving that need and instead sowing the seeds of a bigger mess only they can solve? Awesome.
If some of their supporters get thrown into the meat grinder for that to happen? Meh. As long as they can plausibly blame them for it, anyway.
This, IMO applies to all the major ‘split’ issues - abortion, gun control, immigration, you name it.
One ‘advantage’ too for those in power for those playing this game, is anyone someone ‘on the edge’ of doing legal stuff has to support them and give them even more power to undermine the legal system, since a reversion to the mean will definitely put them in jail.
If the courts just say ‘yeah, whatever Trump says’, then it’s not chaotic at all.
"Ve vill haff order!"
to avoid misunderstanding, here, the 'claimed to be important but is actually insignificant' refers to something that, from the organization's perspective
‘legitimate business purpose’ discrimination has always been allowed, which is why it’s okay to only hire black actors for a role that calls for black actors in a movie, or only pretty young women as strippers, etc.
Also, discrimination like ‘I just don’t like them’.
Illegal discrimination is where the hiring person is discriminated based on a protected class where it is not a legitimate business need [https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/3-who-protecte....]
There are a million different ways to structure these rules however (and actually do hiring) with different entirely predictable outcomes in actual employee race/sex/gender composition. As well as different types of employment environments that when interacting with regional cultural/socialization backgrounds, will result in entirely predictable outcomes in actual employee race/sex/gender/national origin/age compositions.
For example, you aren’t going to find many supermodels working at the local sewer treatment plant. Or blandly ugly people working in the entertainment industry.
However, depending on the organization and size (the federal gov’t has had this since the 70’s, and it’s been expanding over the years to even large companies the last 10ish or so), there is a federal requirement for Affirmative Action as well, where if the company/org, etc. doesn’t have the ‘right amount’ of people who meet course these criteria determined by the department of labor, then there is a presumption that it proves ‘defacto’ illegal discrimination.
There is no need for candidates being discriminated against illegally at that point to show they are being discriminated against (and in fact, they may not actually be discriminated against in any explicit or conscious way) - the mere fact they are not there in a given % of representation is taken of evidence of that discrimination.
That means if a company/organization gets too much attention, then they are required to actually discriminate against other candidates to ensure the outcomes of their hiring and retention roughly match what the DOL would expect. Regardless of the actual circumstances/suitability of their hiring.
That also means if someone is ‘over represented’, then that means they’ll be discriminated against quite consistently and per the department of labor, ‘legally’. It’s essentially a ‘necessary evil’.
The backlash now appears to be targeting anything related to those efforts, nominally under the idea of meritocracy, but eh, that is frankly not a very convincing figleaf. And yes, it will be targeting everyone who isn’t.. well, you can guess.
Our new president is a felon, after all.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/nasa-moves-swiftly-to-...
This article has some context, but note that the heads of several agencies were all compelled to send the same thing out.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...
DEI, DEIA, Environmental Justice
Sounds like it's to end or force underground affirmative action programs for bipoc, disabled, and climate change
This is why people want to get rid of DEI. Aside from all their obnoxious rhetoric, they don’t even accomplish the thing they say they’re supposed to do.
I know people will claim that now nobody will buy any screen reader software, but it doesn’t sound like anyone was doing that before either.
Have you ever dealt with government procurement?
His problem wasn't that he wanted something to help him with his disability, his problem was that he wanted something as part of a government job.
Getting rid of DEI won't change the way government procurement works.
‘Veteran owned’, ‘Black owned’, ‘Women owned’, or the real meal ticket - ‘Black Women Veteran owned’ is a huge thing in gov’t procurement. To the point where if you aren’t those things, you’d better be a major (near monopoly) provider and have your own congressman or two ensuring you’ll get bids.
If they remove the affirmative action requirement in contractors, it’s going to be a bloodbath.
Not so much from an actual ‘which company does what’, but rather in all the various borderline (or actual) fraudulent corporate structures that have been setup to game the system.
This has been going on (and well understood) for at least 30 years that I personally know about.
I'm not claiming this is the only problem with government contracting, but it's an example of exactly the kind of policy which leads to the source article's complaint. The author may have identified a vendor with a cheaper and better product, but if they let everyone go around making such decisions how would they know whether they're hitting the quota?
The numbers I’ve seen some of these departments get paid is mind boggling. It’s possible to both value these principles and yet be in disgust at what a grift so much of it has become.
I yearn for a proper Conservative Party to bring some sanity back to the world. I wish that the Christian right would actually follow the teaching of Jesus that they claim.
I don't agree with a lot of what the Democrats do, but they generally do what they do out of a place of good and Republicans are working out of a place of hate. And that matters. Tearing it all down and hurting people just isn't something I feel that I can support, no matter what other things they do that I might agree with or might help me.
From my perspective, both sides engage in it just as much as the other, and it's getting worse because people are choosing to respond in kind rather than take the higher ground. I voted for neither party in the last cycle, and it's likely to stay that way for me unless things dramatically change.
Could you give an actual example? This isn't some kind of gotcha, I'm genuinely curious. As a non-American the Democratic Party seem pathologically obsessed with reaching across the aisle to the moderate right winger.
Honestly, though, I'm more curious about the examples that led you to believe they reach across the aisle. Neither party does, both are firmly encamped, and both routinely resort to verbal attacks based on party affiliation.
That said, ignoring the loudest voices in the room, especially when they're pointed at you is very hard to do.
A11y, good-faith DEI, equality/equity programs were conceived in the AoC and then started to get implemented in the AoI, but in the AoA it will be rolled back with extreme prejudice (at least in USA) with plethora unintended consequences as laid out by OP. While people gormlessly argue about the myth of meritocracy, there will come a certain point where only those who can't recognize (or actively dismiss/excuse) N*zi salutes will be the only ones conveniently not suspected of being "legacy DEI" hires.
Relevant quote: “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
“Leopards Eating People's Faces Party refers to a parody of regretful voters who vote for cruel and unjust policies (and politicians) and are then surprised when their own lives become worse as a result. It has been commonly used to parody regretful Brexit and Trump voters.”
The parody here is essentially saying that if you supported the Republicans (Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party) and then you ended up being harmed (leopards ate your face) as a result of their policies that are explicit in their intent to harm people (we will eat people’s faces) despite thinking that you wouldn’t be harmed (“I never thought the leopards would eat __my__ face”) then you are a fool.
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/leopards-eating-peoples-faces...
It seems like it's just an excuse for mostly fine-under-trump White folks to go "welp, don't blame me, I didn't vote for him" to people who are actually impacted by his policies. And they seem to apply it liberally to people who may have never supported him or who belong to demographic groups that statistically voted for him way less than White folks.
And even if they did vote for trump and are now facing the consequences? I still care enough not to laugh at them from the side lines for being the victim of a con man, and so should you.
So many Liberals seem to have been emboldened by losing to Trump a second time into embracing bullying and letting go of what empathy and compassion that they had instead of using the moment to question why their party is so disconnected from so much of the country and why so many who are suffering would fall for Trump's lies instead of Democrats and the status quo.
It's not just that it's wrong to use your anger over a bully being elected as an excuse to become a bully yourself, importantly it's also a garbage strategy for trying to defeat MAGA down the road.
This recent strain of Liberalism and it's compromise is so exhausting. They sell out everything they're supposed to stand for and embrace things like fracking, the lie of migrant crime, they choose to proudly wear the endorsement of people like the Cheneys and expect to win elections by being "diet Republicans"?
It seems like they'll do just about anything instead of actually challenging the systems that cause common folks to suffer.
Where was it?
All I saw were people lecturing "the left" and calling Trump critics hypocrites and blaming them for Trumpism just as you are. Faux outrage over Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" comment - which she was 100% correct about. Not so much as an ounce of self-reflection or awareness, only ever deflection and projection, only ever blaming the other side and acting like victims.
I agree with you 100% about the failures of Liberalism and the Democrats though, but people are well aware of that. Unfortunately the system only affords us two options, and we're forced to choose the lesser evil. As far as bullying goes, I mean... my side isn't the one sending out ICE agents to kidnap brown people or stripping gay and trans people of their rights or waging war against "equality" and "woke."
Maybe you should be asking the people who keep voting for the systems causing common folks to suffer to challenge them. You won't though, that isn't why you're here.
And are you really surprised by that shift? Many in this country are suffering, and bought in to Obama's "HOPE" and "CHANGE" and got next to nothing for it. In this election Harris tried to sell herself as simply "Biden but younger" instead of presenting transformative ideas to help people - and in a choice between continued suffering or the promise of something better of course many will choose the potential for something better - even if the person presenting it is a deplorable con man.
And yes, I will absolutely call out the so-called Left in this country for doing too little, for being hypocrites, for fighting for the status quo rather than for their constituents. Sure, Republicans are worse, but Democrats keep handing them free elections by being utterly tepid.
And, for the record, "the people who keep voting for the systems causing common folks to suffer" includes anyone voting for Democrats too.
From the left, yes. Nary a peep from the right. A trickle compared to a torrent. Let's not pretend there was any sort of significant backlash against Trump on that side. If they really wanted Trump gone they could have gotten rid of him.
>and in a choice between continued suffering or the promise of something better of course many will choose the potential for something better - even if the person presenting it is a deplorable con man.
Except the people who voted for the deplorable con man were never going to vote for Harris, or Biden, or any Democrat regardless of what they offered, ever.
I think your criticisms of the Democrats are spot on, but I am curious what you think a Democratic Party platform that Trumpists would have accepted in 2024 would actually look like.
Also you can say "Republicans are worse" but you're in here implying the anger of the right and the choices they've made are perfectly justified as a response to the left, but you aren't willing to extend the same sympathy to the left. You're calling the left racist for taking some schadenfreude (which is weird given that Trump voters are almost exclusively white) when the right has literally run on schadenfreude and racism for a decade.
Trump voters are not automatons. They are (presumably) adults, with agency and free will (whatever that is) and are morally and ethically responsible for the decisions they make and the consequences of their actions. Were they lied to? Yes. Populism is, at its core, a deceitful and manipulative ideology. That doesn't mean they get let off the hook, they can get just as much as they give.
This gets at the truth.
To generalize: if people can't get a win, they'll settle for blame. Pointing the finger at others feels pretty good. Whereas the soul-searching you speak of is suffering, especially for those invested in ideology.
IMHO, this coping is inevitable. We have no leaders who can admit our fault, nor do we longer share a set of teachings to make sense of where we went astray. What we do seem to have in abundance is rage, which fuels the comforting political fantasies we're witnessing today.
ADA was used as a weapon against small businesses and caused a lot of products to change in unwanted ways for ADA compliance, leaving those who are only purchasing for personal use without good options, so I understand the opposition. Hopefully this leads to a more commonsense approach to accessibility instead of mandated bureaucratic box-ticking.
First, DEI became DEIA under Biden, see the executive order [1] (now worryingly removed from the site). That had some logic as a mission creep which is always welcomed by the bureaucrats.
Second, when the Trump decided to dismantle DEI, keeping "DEIA" didn't make sense, and surgically removing DEI from DEIA is not his style. So it was removed altogether, and the bureaucrats cared more about going with pendulum swing more than caring about any unintended effects, so anything associated with DEI was removed without any care about accessibility.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250120152648/https://www.white...