Throughout the years, I've worked with different people, on different teams, across continents, in an office (I hated that), remote from home and from co-working spaces, on design, on development, helping testers, writing documentation and helping with strategy.
I've seen websites go down, teams go in panic mode, hot fixes going out minutes after a release, customers complaining they can't use the product and developers stressed about Friday 5PM's release.
And there was always something I needed to remind myself all the time.
Whenever something goes wrong, I can't assign blame and think someone actually wanted things to go wrong.
- The homepage has some grey text on white. It's not really readable. The designer might have forgotten to check colour contrast.
- You can't fill in the login form with your keyboard. The developer didn't know this was a requirement.
- You're not sure if you added the product to the shopping cart if you're using a screen reader. The tester probably neglected to test that bit.
- Some of the important images don't have an alternative text. The content team may have forgotten to provide these descriptions.
- The form labels are not properly associated with their input fields. The developer might not have been aware of the correct HTML structure.
- The headings are not in a logical hierarchical order. The content team might not have considered how this affects screen reader users.
- There are no ARIA labels on interactive elements like buttons with only icons. The front-end developer might not have been trained in ARIA usage.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect, ignorance, or incompetence.
That's Hanlon’s Razor.
I keep reminding myself of that.