Post 7: The Edge Case Myth
- James W.
- 3 days ago
- 1 min read
In tech, we talk about "edge cases."
A wheelchair user navigating a website? Edge case. A person with dysarthria using voice recognition? Edge case. A neurodivergent person with different communication needs? Edge case.
Here's the language problem: these aren't edge cases. They're people with legitimate needs.
But when you optimize for population means, by definition, the people who need your system most become statistical outliers. Outliers are treated as noise.
The language of "edge cases" masks what's actually happening: we are systematically deprioritizing the needs of the most marginalized users because they statistically fall outside the distribution we optimized for.
Call them what they are: people. And design for them first.