Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Designing web page layouts for screen readers

benrobertson.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–29 of 29 posts

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#21

Post by brobertson »

brlewis wrote: post #18
mwcampbell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware, article and section don't do anything for screen readers. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on that. On the other hand, nav and banner (among others) are types of landmarks. It's nice to have those, but the one that screen reader users will want all the time is main.

Does it have to be role=main to support all screen readers, or these days do they generally support http://html5doctor.com/the-main-element/ ?

I believe `` is not supported in IE11 - here is a resource that you can use to check HTML5 accessibility compatibility: https://www.html5accessibility.com/

The tricky thing about when you're talking about screen readers is that you now have to take into account browser support AND screen reader support, which can sometimes multiply the amount of test cases for things.

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#22

Post by brobertson »

saagarjha wrote: post #6

Usually, you can get a lot of accessibility “for free” if you try not to stray too far from how things are supposed to be used. The more you start getting clever and abusing components, the more likely your layout is impossible to navigate by screen readers and similar assistive software. My website makes heavy use of semantic tags, and doesn’t have an overly complex layout, so I think it does pretty well in a screen…

Yeah, I totally agree with this. Staying as semantic as possible is the best way to go. With some very judicial use of ARIA I think you can improve the experience a little.

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#23

Post by uxamanda »

Very timely! I've been working on making a site accessible to screen readers and people who navigate via the command line. One thing I have been wondering is how often people who use screen readers are navigating with CSS/styles turned off. It seems like screen readers would work better without CSS (for example on semantically correct elements that are getting decorated with CSS), but I don't know if that is common or not. Anyone have any experience with that?

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#24

Post by sam_bishop »

brobertson wrote: post #20

Hey, author of the post here :) Thanks so much for sharing, and I'm glad to see some good discussion going on here! I'd love to answer any other questions people might have. Also, for those newer to the accessibility space, I have a free email course that covers 10 common accessibility mistakes, how to fix them, and the accessibility principles behind them. Here is a link to the course: https://benrobertson.io/course…

I'm a software developer. I like the idea of accessible web interfaces, but I have, and probably always will, work on user interfaces that have a relatively small user base compared to large sites like the Washington Post or Google. (I've worked for SaaS companies for the last 15 years.) Someone in another thread mentioned legal requirements regarding accessibility for US air carriers; are there any general requirements for software accessibility? (Software used as part of a job, in particular.) Otherwise I don't think that I'd be able to convince my management that this was worth worrying about, unfortunately.

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#25

Post by maroonblazer »

reaperducer wrote: post #7

My biggest frustration with building accessible web sites is that what looks good to a boss, or manager, or marketing department is not always what works well for building a semantic, accessible web page. It's often a struggle to make the two work together, especially years after a site is completed and new features have to be bolted on because of the whims of someone higher in the food chain. I often wonder if it wo…

I'm one of those in the marketing department and there's a compelling case to be made for making sites accessible. If you're running into obstacles from management or marketing it's likely because they don't have a grasp of the numbers.

Getting the data is easier nowadays than in the past. E.g. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/miscellane... and http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/07/disabled-ame...

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#26

Post by zdragnar »

sam_bishop wrote: post #24
brobertson wrote: post #20

Hey, author of the post here :) Thanks so much for sharing, and I'm glad to see some good discussion going on here! I'd love to answer any other questions people might have. Also, for those newer to the accessibility space, I have a free email course that covers 10 common accessibility mistakes, how to fix them, and the accessibility principles behind them. Here is a link to the course: https://benrobertson.io/course…

I'm a software developer. I like the idea of accessible web interfaces, but I have, and probably always will, work on user interfaces that have a relatively small user base compared to large sites like the Washington Post or Google. (I've worked for SaaS companies for the last 15 years.) Someone in another thread mentioned legal requirements regarding accessibility for US air carriers; are there any general requireme…

I'm not aware of any general requirements for software, aside from what the ADA covers and case law. The most common example I know of is Target; IIRC it was among the first to bridge the real world and the internet in terms of legal requirements for accessibility. [0]

What it largely boils down to, from a legal (not necessarily a moral) standpoint is the balance between "reasonable accommodations" for the disabled and "undue burden" on the business to implement accommodations.

When you're small and scrappy, or dealing with some domain that absolutely demands unimpared vision to use, you can argue that accessibility features would place some undue burden on the business to implement. As you grow larger as a company, and the very likely probability that what you do doesn't actually absolutely need unimpared vision, the more likely a judge or jury would be to find that accessibility features would represent a "reasonable accommodation" that you must fulfill, and likely must pay a lot of money for failing to have done so.

SaaS applications almost invariably can be made accessible, since they are, by definition, provided as a service over http or some API. Whether you must make them accessible is for a court to decide; whether you should is almost always a yes. It's generally cheaper up front than paying the legal cost later on, and your users will appreciate it. You may even end up hiring a blind engineer, who would most certainly appreciate it.

[0] https://webaim.org/blog/target-lawsuit-settled/

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#27

Post by extra88 »

uxamanda wrote: post #23

Very timely! I've been working on making a site accessible to screen readers and people who navigate via the command line. One thing I have been wondering is how often people who use screen readers are navigating with CSS/styles turned off. It seems like screen readers would work better without CSS (for example on semantically correct elements that are getting decorated with CSS), but I don't know if that is common o…

The styling doesn't change the semantics for the screen reader. Most people who use a screen reader also have some vision so disabling a site's CSS entirely would remove meaning that is, intentionally or not, conveyed by the styling. It's more common to modify a site's styling to be more usable, though that's not a reason to skip making a site's styling more accessible to begin with by having sufficient color contrast, large enough text, etc.

One bit of styling best avoided because it creates confusion for users operating a site by keyboard is the "order" property used with Flexbox and CSS Grid, it will change the visual order of elements but not their order in the DOM.

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#28

Post by uxamanda »

extra88 wrote: post #27
uxamanda wrote: post #23

Very timely! I've been working on making a site accessible to screen readers and people who navigate via the command line. One thing I have been wondering is how often people who use screen readers are navigating with CSS/styles turned off. It seems like screen readers would work better without CSS (for example on semantically correct elements that are getting decorated with CSS), but I don't know if that is common o…

The styling doesn't change the semantics for the screen reader. Most people who use a screen reader also have some vision so disabling a site's CSS entirely would remove meaning that is, intentionally or not, conveyed by the styling. It's more common to modify a site's styling to be more usable, though that's not a reason to skip making a site's styling more accessible to begin with by having sufficient color contras…

That makes sense, thanks for the reply. I hadn't thought about low vision users using screen readers.

Re: Designing web page layouts for screen readers

#29

Post by robmc_ »

reaperducer wrote: post #16
esphen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with this. While it may sound like a good idea, it literally violates the U.S. Air Carrier Access Act and SAS (the airline) was recently fined for doing exactly what you describe[1]. This solution may also create a situation where the accessible website becomes a "second class citizen" in terms of content because managers are not willing to allocate resources to improving the dedicated accessibility-friend…

Interesting. I don't work in the airline space, but I wouldn't be surprised if other sectors had similar laws. So I guess the suggestion is moot.

Not only do you run the risk of offending users with disabilities by forcing a separate experience, this also creates a separate code base to maintain and often developers forget to update text-only versions. I've worked in the accessibility space for years and this concept is an idea of the past and likely to generate a lawsuit. Accessibility lawsuits are popping up left and right in the public sector across every business vertical and I would strongly advise against this.
Post reply on HN