It's worth pointing out that for an application definitely aimed at helping out under-represented groups, the mobile UI for the application form is absolutely atrocious and one of the worst I've ever encountered. The free-text questions also are difficult to work with on the regular UI as well, since they're buggy and awkward, but the mobile UI is just straight-up unusable. It scrolls awkwardly to the point of hiding text you're inputting, and if I had to guess, it's not screen-reader accessible at all. It also by default prevents editing on applications in progress before you click an "edit application" button, but this button requires "swiping" (really, scrolling) to show the button past the visible screen on mobile, making it just feel like the application is unusable by default.
I don't know anything about the internals of SmartSelect or the reason for choosing it as a provider, but even something simple like Google Forms would be preferable to this since it at least meets basic usability criteria. Obviously I don't expect the foundation to switch providers since the applications have already started, but I hope that accessibility and usability for applicants is seriously considered next year, either by convincing SmartSelect to fix their system or by switching to another.
This probably isn't the best forum for this kind of feedback, but I couldn't really find anywhere else, and decided to post this here.
Thanks for that feedback - I've raised it to the foundation staff.
You could also use the Rust Zulip #foundation stream for public feedback, or privately email grants@rustfoundation.org or more generally contact@rustfoundation.org.
Thank you for that. I feel it's important to mention I don't blame anyone for being negligent in this regard considering how, despite being multiple years old at this point, the Foundation and the Rust project in general are still at the stage where they're figuring out how to formally do a variety of different things all at once. Especially considering how a lot of people working on this stuff are doing so in addition to full-time work, so have the added stress of that too.
I figured that this is important to mention and the kind of thing that would probably slip through the cracks, and I don't mind being public about that because I think a culture of giving thoughtful feedback is something we all need.
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