About Universal Cake
Universal Cake is a new kind of organization that strives to be highly informed by human well-being.
How did we get to this place exactly? Great question!
Human-created technology is deeply shaped by human choices. This means that the architecture, creation, and recreation of technologies can be improved to better serve people—and, in some cases, all living things.
We believe the clearest way to achieve this is to keep well-being at the center of our mission. By foregrounding this value, we ensure that everything we build—from internal practices to external products—aligns with human flourishing and thriving communities.
Mission
Our mission is to support human flourishing by applying values of well-being and happiness to the production of services and goods.
We document these values, tools, strategies, and resources in open and transparent ways so that anyone can participate, replicate, improve, or expand upon them.
The “good work” is to take good ideas and make them better—serving well-being in all its forms.
Approaches
Core Values
- Transparency → We share decision-making processes, tool selections, and expense tracking.
- Accessibility → We design for multilingual, inclusive, and accessible participation.
- Sustainability → We prioritize systems that are environmentally and socially responsible.
- Equity → We believe in fairness, open access, and supporting diverse communities.
These values are not abstract—they have direct, cumulative effects on our primary product.
From Values to Outcomes
Our websites and resources embody our values in tangible ways:
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Accessibility → Inclusive Websites
Built to meet accessibility standards, usable by people of diverse abilities, and adaptable for multilingual audiences. -
Transparency → Trustworthy Systems
Static websites make source code, configuration, and version history clear, reducing hidden complexity. -
Sustainability → Low-Footprint Infrastructure
Static sites require minimal server resources, are efficient to host, and have very low energy consumption compared to dynamic systems. -
Equity → Fair Access to Knowledge
Content is open, searchable, and sharable, ensuring knowledge is available without unnecessary barriers.
Features of Our Primary Product
The cumulative effect of these values is expressed in our websites:
- Highly Accessible → Designed with WCAG-aligned best practices and multilingual capability.
- Very Fast → Static-site architecture and optimized assets deliver near-instant loading.
- Lightweight, Low Footprint → Minimal hosting costs and reduced environmental impact.
- Secure by Design → No reliance on heavy server-side processing; static hosting reduces attack surfaces.
- Portable and Transparent → Content lives in simple Markdown, version-controlled in Git, easy to migrate or replicate.
- Scalable → Static sites can be distributed globally via CDNs without complex infrastructure.
These features are possible because of our reliance on MkDocs and the broader strengths of static-site generation. Static sites allow us to embody our values in concrete, technical outcomes.
Beyond Websites
In addition to building websites, we extend our values into:
- Accessibility consulting → Centered on real-world human needs and legal alignment.
- Well-being analysis → Identifying gaps in current services and products, then rethinking them through “good work” to create improvements.
Who We Are
While Universal Cake was founded and nurtured by Christopher Steel, with AI assistance from ChatGPT-5 (OpenAI), it stands on the knowledge and contributions of many. Humanity’s collaborative evolution of knowledge forms the backbone of this work.
We welcome others to join, adapt, and refine these methods—bringing their own learning and context to enrich collective progress.
License
This document, About Universal Cake (v0.0.2), by Christopher Steel, with AI assistance from ChatGPT-5 (OpenAI), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
