Trollies, veils and prisoners
summary
Argues that ethical thought experiments map cleanly onto design choices, using the trolley problem (save five people vs one) to frame tradeoffs, the veil of ignorance to recommend designing from worst-case users (leave your Retina display at home), and the prisoner’s dilemma to show how aligning stakeholder interests wins funding. Gives concrete fixes: restore visible CSS focus outlines instead of removing them, critique Twitter’s donut that hid character counts (users disliked it, a Chrome extension reverted it), and warns that sticky headers can harm performance on slow devices.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Trolleys, veils and prisoners the case for accessibility from philosophical ethics
- 10:50Virtue ethics Duty ethics Utilitarianism
- 12:19honesty moderation generosity friendliness
- 21:48The greatest happiness principle
- 22:27What is an increase in happiness?
- 24:25Does my action increase the website's total accessibility?
- 31:05As a digital team
- 33:10principle of equal liberty
- 34:26Consider new features from the original position
- 36:07conflicting interests
- 37:02Line up interests to get more people care about accessibility
- 39:17think beyond your own privilege
