Microaggressions vis-à-vis atmospheric changes
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for anyone, like me, who works in a DEI-related area. Though not often recognized as part of the DEI umbrella, accessibility is a part of inclusivity just with a focus on getting to inclusivity, to equity. The atmosphere is very, very different now.
I shouldn’t be surprised. The overall feeling in the air is far different today than last week, than last month. With the administration change comes the dark cloud of “meritocracy” (where merit is “you look like me and/or you pay me”) permeating approaches to non-profit-oriented industry. So where before the grander air was very pro-helping diverse people find equity and inclusivity, that’s not there.
When larger things, powerful things, change their air, it gives people cover to rally against anything they see as frivolous or lacking merit. It’s raining, so everyone should get under the right umbrella… I always encountered pockets of cultural resistance. The pockets have been getting smaller over the years as my tenacity has swayed the beast that is my job, but recently those pockets have been sort of galvanized in ways I thought we had gotten past.
The funny thing (very much not in the ha-ha way) is that the resistance isn’t purely vocal. Like people will ask why we need to make our software accessible, but rather than be swayed by the righteous argument like they used to, it’s almost like people can just shrug it off? People seem empowered to ignore the requirements, ignore the advocates, and just keep working beyond it.
Put your finger on it
I’ve been trying to put my finger on it. Microaggressions isn’t exactly right. It’s like micro-pressures? Little eddies of turmoil in the atmosphere. It’s a weather change that affects literally everything, even if those effects aren’t super obvious.
Microaggressions are statements or attitudes encountered daily that undercut the perceived equity or value of a person associated with a minority group. Making jokes at the expense of a group is a microaggression because it reinforces the outsider status of the joked-about group. Using words of identity as a pejorative - that looks gay - attributes a negative quality to gayness. “Physicians aren’t blind” is pure ignorance that is easy to believe because, obviously, you need full vision to see anything in the medical field (you don’t).
So I think what I’ve been feeling are these micropressures which are a shift in attitude that’s unspoken but understood. They are aggressions in that they are deployed to others and minimize the equity of outsider groups but don’t have that obvious expressed content.
It’s expressed in behaviors.
You don’t have to speak it, you can just do, or not do, the thing. You can ignore a fix request for a screen reader interaction. You can deprioritize simplification efforts that improve cognitive accessibility. You can release it and “come back to that later” and then just… not.
Micropressures are shifts in behavior in alignment with microaggressions without the outspoken elements.