"Fuck You."

• 06 September 2013
• empathy,
• opinion,
• progressive enhancement

I've heard some serious shit said in meetings.

"We don't care about blind people." —Shithead McHorrible

After I pulled my eyebrows down from the top of my head, the only words that I could muster were "Those words actually just came out of your mouth." Here's some other things we don't care about:

• BlackBerries
• Windows Phones
• Poor people
• Androids
• IE8
• IE7
• Definitely IE6
• Colorblind people
• 7" tablets
• Firefox
• Screen readers
• Opera Mini
• e-ink Kindles
• Kindle Fires
• Nokias
• non-JS users
• Sony PSPs
• Touch users
• Keyboard users
• Foreign language people

These are all actual things I've heard expressed from either clients or colleagues. And here's why we don't care about them:

• Those people aren't our target demographic
• Nobody browses the Web on those devices
• No one would ever do this from their [outdated/clunky/quirky] device
• It would cost too much to support them
• Nobody disables Javascript
• They should just upgrade their browser
• Nobody holds their device that way
• They can't afford our products anyways

We sound like assholes. Next time you find yourself intentionally depriving someone an experience—to acquire knowledge, to complete a task, to do something online that can make their life even just a little better—picture yourself standing in front of that person in real life, looking them square in the eyes, then firmly and definitively saying "Fuck you." *[DETAILS]: Device, Environment, Time, Activity, Individual, Location, Social *[RESS]: Responsive Design with Server-Side Components

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