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Comment by fellowniusmonk | Hacker News Reader

I have a buddy who did his Human Factors PHd at wright state/wright patt nearly 15 years ago.

"Tech people" have a lot of lies they believe, about disabilities, about valid addresses, everything.

When he told me that schools for the blind train their student to fact check things like directions and not simply rely on a single source while navigating new terrain it clicked for me that the sighted have no clue and sympathy is more honest and less presumptive/simulative than empathy.

But to be sympathetic you have to listen to actual user feedback and do actual observation, with empathy you just get to use your imagination to put yourself in their shoes.

At least for some definition of sympathy and some definition of empathy.

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The casual ableism is not unique to tech but I do notice its prevalence, both here and in my career.

I am slightly disabled physically, I've made comments here a time or two where someone will make a (probably unintentionally) dismissive comment like "This is easy, just do XYZ every day" and I'll make a comment like "lots of people cannot do XYZ every day due to disability" and there's a literal backlash of commenters like "well obviously we're not talking about them," like, what? Do you think disabled people don't exist? That seems to be the implication, it comes out casually so much in my daily interactions, some people are almost offended by the idea of it even.

I mean, there's a lot going on here, contextually speaking.

If I made a comment saying "oh just write a quick bash script to change all the files to pngs" and someone commented saying "lots of people cannot write a bash script because they don't know bash", is that a useful comment?

It's in the context of health, which is what most relevant discussions regarding a disability would arise here. It's worth noting that the original comment "just do" also probably isn't very helpful to a discussion.

And people have such a poor distinction of exactly where the limits lie.

My mother was blind. I was able to teach her how to glue up PVC. (For those of you who don't know--it's a don't-touch, less than a minute of working time and sets even faster if assembled and not moving.) Could she build things out of PVC? Yes. Could she repair a pipe? No. She needed everything perfectly arranged, an existing pipe wouldn't be perfectly arranged. And when my father died people wouldn't believe the big power tools in the garage were hers, not his. (Stuff where she could measure and clamp, hands only on the tool's controls.)

> train their student to fact check things like directions

In college I had a blind guy ask me how to get to some building on campus. I looked up and the was sign of the building he wanted into. It still took me several tries to get him useful directions. I know that I can duck under that railing..., but how to explain that - I still don't know. I did eventually get him there, but it is a lot harder than you think and I only needed to get him about 5 meters.

Look no further than some of the comments on this very post.

Instead of trying to refute the OP, maybe people should listen to what he's saying.

It's a form of engaging, plus it's a rant.

I've yet to see good outcomes from self-infantilizing.

That seems pretty anathema to current trends. The underlying refrain is that users are stupid and cannot be trusted. Faster horses and all that.

Shut up monkeys, I will tell you what you want.

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