[Weekly Retro] A disability tax
#271 - Feb.2026
Hi there!
Here's a quick idea I've been thinking during the weekend.
People with disabilities pay a big tax every single day.
It's not only about the cost of having a disability (which this study shows can be significant) but about the small costs they encounter everywhere.
Everything takes longer and costs more.
I have close relatives with disabilities and we have learned the hard way how badly designed products and services add to this tax.
Filling a simple form can take twice as long. Following bureaucratic processes can be a big challenge if you can't move easily. Using an app that is not accessible and understandable to most people is a silent exclusion.
Every inaccessible form, every unusable app, every bureaucratic experience adds to this tax. And we, the people who design and launch digital products, are setting the rates.
All people (with disabilities or not) deserve a better experience.
📊 Graph of the week
I believe that show that the accountability problem is much more centralized that we think: 32 companies generate almost half the CO2 Global emissions for fossil fuels and cement production (data from 2024).
The Carbon Majors database traces 34.7 GtCO2e of greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 to the 166 oil, gas, coal, and cement producers, a 0.8% increase from these entities’ total emissions in 2023. Just 32 companies were linked to over half of global fossil fuel and cement CO2emissions in 2024. As shown in Figure 1, the top 10 companies by emissions, cumulatively responsible for 27.6% of global fossil CO2 emissions in 2024, were all fully or majority state-owned companies.
👨🏻💻 Interesting links
- A new navigation paradigm: Is AI truly eliminating navigation, or is it simply shifting its agent and form?
- Moltbook is the newest social media platform, but it's just for AI bots. This is getting very weird.
🖋️ Quote of the week
“Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.” – Isaac Asimov
