For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws

Wow. I don't know anything about screen readers or how blind people use the web, but I'm surprised that a strictly text website like HN would be inaccessible to blind people.

One idle idea I had at some a11y conference was this: as a person doing a lot of CMS customization, almost all the software I write is an accommodation to all kinds of people.

Specifically, I personally can just write content straight to a database with my DB client. I can write nice, valid HTML. I can crop photos and output them just fine with various CLI and GUI applications.

The people I work with cannot.

So I write bits of code so that they can edit headlines and page titles without having to open a plain text editor. I create extensions so that the graphic element they want to include is done in a way that doesn't break the page markup. I write code so they can use the mouse to drag photos to where they need to place them in the articles they want to publish.

And people have accommodated my own needs: I really don't understand how my SSH keys work, just that they do work. I don't know how to write an SQL client, but someone wrote one I can use. Etc, etc.

The idea that as folks who are making things, a large portion of what we do is enabling people to do things they couldn't otherwise do makes me feel a great deal of solidarity with everyone who currently needs more accommodations than I do.

Pragmatically, if we live long enough we will all eventually have a hard time seeing the screen, clicking with a mouse, understanding new UI modalities, etc.

I find that fact quite motivating it means I am not just trying to be kind to other folks: working to make a11y a must-have is an action in solidarity with our own interests and not just a thing we might do for other people.

I think of better accessibility as being better usability, and thus 'accessibility measures' as 'good ideas' per se for any infrastructure that cares about its users -- of course, the problem is that many organizations do not.

I actually randomly get reminded of this now and then, when I:

- open a door with an elbow instead of greasy or occupied hands

- tab through a UI or use alt key shortcuts to quickly perform repetitive tasks not worth automating

- take carts, bicycles, and other heavy objects up accessible ramps, kerb ramps, or mandatory lifts

- read alt tags of images that fail to load or that the file host has lost

- search in or read the captions/subtitles of media that doesn't get to the point

- read captions when I can't play audio

- machine-translate autogenerated captions from unknown languages

Not to mention all that gets taken for granted that wouldn't exist had it not been required.

Edit:

Found a submission about just this while searching for your past rants:) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30062178

In the disability spectrum chart linked there, the figure with a sword and round shield illustrating the 'Heavy Accent => Speech x Situational' case is brilliant; going far backwards in time guarantees linguistic distance from any viewer.

Well, see, you're on to something: these tools exist as a litigation defense layer: large enough targets sometimes get ADA lawsuit threats. They frequently come with an offer to settle. When you use something like Accessibe, you provide enough of a plausible effort that it's not worth it for the litigious sort to waste their time with you, so they move to other lower hanging fruit.

None of this, you'll note, is particularly concerned with how the tool _actually_ impacts a11y. But, as you state, it's the lazy solution.

> a few sets of glasses to distort my vision

Bless you for doing that. I have eye isses and every so often I suggest to devs that they put a thin layer of vaseline on their glasses just to see what a lot of older people do.