Great piece from Eric Bailey. A few lines:

Like cicadas emerging from the ground, design industry conversations about quality seem to periodically erupt on social media. Also like cicadas, these articles are as predicable as they are irritating.

Quality is whatever someone else needs it to be

design is a team sport

companies who make their own custom typeface can and do fail just as often as companies who don’t.

Just because someone is not using your service does not mean they want to.

The other side of this coin is true too, I think: just because someone is using your service doesn’t mean they want to.

Also love this framing:

Customization lives at the heart of accessibility.

Telling someone to make something “accessible” might sound like a task. Telling them to make it “customizable” sounds fun.

Is the Trojan horse for accessibility customization?

Using “Re:” is a slippery growth hacker move to get my attention

Some real shady stuff here. A great reminder:

The owner of every web extension you install wades through these kinds of emails [offering them money for their userbase], and can be tempted by them.

Scrollbars are part of the area of the browser that is outside your scope of concern.

Similar to “you break it, you buy it” I like this theme Eric proposes for working with the browser: “you modify it, you’re responsible for it.”

If you modify the Operating System scrollbar’s appearance, it is now on you to ensure that it meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines criteria.

If you override X default functionality, it is now on you to provide all defaults the browser does (e.g. prevent default form functionality). That kind of awesome responsibility might make us stop and question our choices a little more often.

When you override this expression, you’re indirectly communicating that someone’s personal preferences are less important than your own visual sensibilities.

You can’t solve culture with technology.

Just that line alone is brilliantly applicable to our world now.