Ethical tech alternatives and the Hawaiian third-gender
Ethical tech alternatives, Māhū, + Monday & Miro get accessible
IN THE MARGINS
"My life could have gone completely different without a lot of luck. I could've been just another black kid in jail, or dead, or still in the ghetto trying to make a dollar by any means necessary. I'm better off, but I'm no better than those who didn't make it out.” - Dr. Mansa Keita (@rasmansa)
This hit home. As a visibly-Black woman with 2 degrees, those little pieces of paper are sometimes hailed as my meal ticket out of whatever hood they think I came from. A status symbol and proof of “success”. Yeah, I worked hard to get into a system rigged against me and not only stay in it but actually get out with said stupid piece of paper. But I can never claim any of that without the support I had or admitting some of that was just pure fucking luck. And random connections. And other people starting paths or laying the foundation for me.
I knew going into uni that the paper and pretty stamp was just a tool - a means to an end. It didn’t change who I fundamentally was as a person and it’s not a comprehensive reflection of the people that do or don’t have it. I am no better, smarter, more ethical, etc than anyone else without a degree. Some people have degrees and their rich ass parents bought their way in. Others have degrees and they busted their ass while working a night job or taking care of family. Shitty assholes have degrees. Incredibly caring and giving people have degrees. Some of the most loving, innovative, intelligent, creative people I know are from places you wouldn’t expect them to be able to make it to higher education from.
Does the uni paper matter for certain jobs? Of course. Does it matter in the grand scheme of life? Not really. I don’t care if you have 10 degrees, a community college certificate, or didn’t make it through grade school. What matters to me is “are you just trying to be a decent person?”
“Mai kū me ka hō'olo, akā e kū me ke akahai.” - “Don’t stand in an air of superiority/judgment, but stand in modesty” aka be humble.
ACCESSIBILITY
Miro Makes Accessibility Improvements
Collaboration juggernaut tool Miro is becoming more accessible for screen reader users! Screen reader users don’t need to take any additional steps to activate the accessibility functionality – when you open a Miro board with your screen reader, you will hear a prompt to activate screen reader mode. Sign up & sign in are screen-reader friendly, it is possible to navigate through the Miro dashboard to open the required board, and the main types of board content such as frames, sticky notes, and shapes can now be accessed with the help of the screen reader. I’ll keeping an eye on their accessibility changelog to track their improvements 👀
Monday Through Sunday Accessiblity
Monday.com, the work management platform, is another M getting into the accessibility improvement game: “We are committed to making the monday.com platform accessible to everyone. We have started by making the navigation, board and dashboard lists and the dashboard toolbar accessible via keyboard navigation and screen reader. This is the first step in reaching our goal for anyone to be able to move around the main flows on monday.com using just their keyboard and ears.” (I can't find the exact source but they do have an accessibility support page)
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
Māhū, the Hawaiian Third Gender
If you haven’t already, check out the animated short film Kapaemahu. It reveals the healing power of four mysterious stones on Waikiki Beach and the legendary dual male and female spirits within them.
Some Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) use the term “māhū” - which is the Hawaiian third-gender identity. Other Indigenous cultures may have a similar term, such as “Two-Spirit”.
Hinaleimoana Kwai Kong Wong-Kalu is the director of that short film Kapaemahu and is one of the most visible māhū women today. In an article with Atmos, she explains why equating her Hawaiian third gender with Western terminology constitutes another kind of erasure.
What I especially liked about the article were the levels of duality and middle spaces that Hinaleimoana experiences in life: between male and female; between Indigenous and Western cultures; between Chinese and Hawaiian heritages. I think people with multi-cultural backgrounds or intersectional identities can relate.
The understanding of māhū is not necessarily something that you can just easily transpose a Western understanding upon. It’s easier for the native view of it to find itself in a Western articulation, but it’s very difficult to try to transfer it from a Western understanding over to native one. Māhū is understood in a LGBTQIA+ context in the Western world. However, it’s far more inclusive and encompassing and complex than that, and I find that using a Western conception of māhū to be very compartmentalized and restricted. - Hinaleimoana Kwai Kong Wong-Kalu
ART & DESIGN
Ethical Tech Alternatives
Do you ever feel frustrated by a tech tool that you KNOW is ~evil~ but you still feel like you have to use it?
Well, the website switching.software is a collection of ethical, easy-to-use, and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software. No alternative is perfect but it helps to take what steps we can.
Ethical.net has a more robust resource for alternatives and defines "ethical" as "pursuing sustainability instead of growth, and putting people above profit."
(Their list is pretty big so I recommend using the categories in the top-right menu to jump to what you’re looking for)
Signing off from the Starship SBLTN,
Laneen (Pronouns: she/they)