IDK who else needs to hear this, but some people still do:
- videos are not documentation
- podcasts are not documentation
- discord is not documentation
- a web forum is not documentation
in addition to having a mismatch from an Information Architecture standpoint, *each* of these introduce barriers to entry and accessibility problems
Your video and your podcast are not accessible. Your video, podcast, or discord are not searchable. Discord permabans people for trying to improve their client
the accessibility problems created by audio & video media aren’t just with people lacking/low- in vision or hearing abilities
I have the not uncommon combination of #ADHD and #AuditoryProcessingDisorder, which present many challenges with non-text content:
- attention management: audio-only is sometimes worse than video, because I need to occupy my eyes w/ *something*
- parsing speech sounds into text, especially w/ subpar sound recordings or accents I don't have years of daily exposure to
@mattly also searchability, availability offline/away from the office, usability in a datacentre environment (noisy, busy, potentially physically hazardous if some muppet has the floortiles up without warning again).
my basic rule of documentation is:
can you print it out, stick it in a folder and refer to it during a full power-outage?
you don't actually need to do that for all the docs but at a basic level it sets the expectation that you might need it in less than ideal circumstances
