DEI is the reason phones can take pictures of black people now. Once Google started hiring more black people, they could make changes to the software that used to always default to trying to adjust exposure for white skin. Now everyone’s skin tone looks good on Google phones. And all because Google hired a few black people who actually knew it was a problem in the first place.
The same goes for any representative technology. The internet didn’t just start working for blind people automatically. Companies had to start hiring blind people before they knew it was an issue. We had a blind engineer come in to our team at Google and tell us how shitty our product was for him to use and how to fix it. Most people wouldn’t think a blind man could be a good software engineer, but he helped us make our product work for millions of additional people that wouldn’t have been able to use it otherwise.
Everyone has different experiences, and just because someone knows how to build what you tell them to doesn’t mean they can make a good product. It’s only when you have diverse input throughout product development that the product you make will truly be good.
Because DEI is intended to (and very often successful at) help hire the most qualified people. No one is color blind, and pretending people are only perpetuates inequality.