Kat Kitay

Flat, muted minimalism, vast fields of whitespace, millennial pink landing pages, and those corporate illustrations that all kind of look the same: the internet today, amirite? In the West, consumers and web developers have deep-rooted expectations of how the web should work and look that have gone largely unquestioned.

In this talk, we'll take stock of these biases and take a culturally relativistic look at the internet outside of our comfort zone. We'll explore questions like: Why are Japanese websites so information-dense? How does a script like Arabic, read right to left, affect web design? What languages do (or can) programmers across the world use? Attendees of this talk will walk away with a fresh perspective and ideas for improving our web and making technology that's more inclusive of a global audience.

2019

JSConf Budapest

Web Norms of the World: An exploration of the internet beyond the West

A talk on things that make us different & unique (i18n, a11y, l10n). Kat thinks that we should embrace culture in our technical practice, and deeply understand our users.

Flat, muted minimalism, vast fields of whitespace, millennial pink landing pages, and those corporate illustrations that all kind of look the same: the internet today, amirite? Actually, that's just "us". In the West, consumers and web developers have deep and long-held expectations of how the web should work and look that have gone largely unquestioned.

While the internet was born in the West, it is not owned by the West. In this talk, we'll take stock of our own biases and take a culturally relativistic look at the internet outside of our comfort zone. We'll explore questions like: Why are Japanese websites so information-dense? How does a script like Arabic, read right to left, affect web design? What languages and frameworks do (or can) programmers across the world use? I hope that attendees of this talk will walk away with a fresh perspective, widened view, and ideas for how to improve the web in the West and make it more inclusive.