For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by rfiat » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

mgdlbp wrote: post #16

at_a_remove wrote: post #10

I have ranted about this before here, many times. When I worked at the university, doing their websites, I simply could not get accessibility on anyone's radar: my boss, the people in the power structure nearby, the awful design people who saw the Web as a means to deliver photography and, if forced, text in a brochure format. I had my own tools -- making sure the XHTML and CSS were valid, testing on multiple browser…

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 rep…

What you're describing is named the "curb cut effect" [0].

> The curb cut effect is the phenomenon of disability-friendly features being used and appreciated by a larger group than the people they were designed for. For example, many hearing people use closed captioning.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect

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

#42

Post by fleddr » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

I wouldn't consider myself an accessibility specialist, but I know a thing or two about it, specifically on how to deploy it strategically in a large organization (Fortune 500).

I'd say the lack of accessibility is not really due to indifference, much more likely it is plain ignorance. Most people know close to nothing about accessibility, worse, don't even know that they need to know.

There's also a technical perspective. Web tech in general is very low level primitives that you stitch together, not really a coherent higher order UI stack. This means that for any given goal, there's a million ways to do it. There's a stunning lack of UI elements but even simple elements that do exist do not truly enforce accessibility.

For example, there's no such thing as a tab component, so people build their own. It's relatively difficult to make it fully accessible. And that assumes you'd even know about accessibility.

Take a simpler element, the img element. I might not know that there is such a thing as an "alt" tag. I'm supposed to know but nothing enforces this knowledge, there's no standard education in web dev. Even if I do know about the alt tag, I might ignore it, as excuse I'll use "other priorities". Or I do use it, but incorrectly, which happens more often than not.

My point is that all of this is almost entirely dependent on personal knowledge and discipline, which is a recipe for disaster at web scale. We need better foundations.

That said, there's reasons to be hopeful. It's definitely getting more attention nowadays and the tooling ecosystem is rapidly improving.

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

#43

Post by fleddr » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #19

at_a_remove wrote: post #10

I have ranted about this before here, many times. When I worked at the university, doing their websites, I simply could not get accessibility on anyone's radar: my boss, the people in the power structure nearby, the awful design people who saw the Web as a means to deliver photography and, if forced, text in a brochure format. I had my own tools -- making sure the XHTML and CSS were valid, testing on multiple browser…

I'm really sorry you go through this too. I face a similar uphill battle at work and it's like shouting into a void (or should I say, avoidance...) What boggles me is that we have a dedicated UX team who seem not to care one whit for bandwidth and accessibility, just imprinting their 'vision' across the org through design systems. Questions around these topics are handwaved away. But speed and accessibility _are_ par…

The problem with both designers and coders is that they never personally feel the consequences of their choices.

That's why each of us should routinely be doing a few hours of customer support for the thing you build. Very humbling and educational.

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

#44

Post by geraldwhen » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

scoot wrote: post #36

You just can't expect a script to make a website accessible. Accessibility cannot be fully automated. Sure there are tools that can highlight some issues, and provide guided review to help find others, but there's no panacea. Instead, start with a UI library that already applies accessibility best practices, such as Material UI [0], then follow the guidance provided for each component (a library can't do everything f…

That’s great until design decides that modals shouldn’t close with the escape key and users should be forced to scroll a text field and click a toggle to navigate away.

Then some data elsewhere on the page animates to a new value, and the user should be notified of this data immediately.

Designers don’t like using prebuilt components. I haven’t found one yet that can live with constraints.

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

#45

Post by bluGill » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

at_a_remove wrote: post #10

I have ranted about this before here, many times. When I worked at the university, doing their websites, I simply could not get accessibility on anyone's radar: my boss, the people in the power structure nearby, the awful design people who saw the Web as a means to deliver photography and, if forced, text in a brochure format. I had my own tools -- making sure the XHTML and CSS were valid, testing on multiple browser…

I'll bet your university has a team of lawyers who would be more than happy to talk to your boss on your behalf about the ADA. Just send them a message and they will deal with it. If they don't keep your copy of the message handy so you can bring it to court with you when the university is sued - you can make out very well for keeping evidence of illegal conduct.

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

#46

Post by klvino » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

at_a_remove wrote: post #10

I have ranted about this before here, many times. When I worked at the university, doing their websites, I simply could not get accessibility on anyone's radar: my boss, the people in the power structure nearby, the awful design people who saw the Web as a means to deliver photography and, if forced, text in a brochure format. I had my own tools -- making sure the XHTML and CSS were valid, testing on multiple browser…

To receive funding from some government bodies in the US there is an accessibility requirement the funds recipient must attest. Of course they could attest to anything if they know the party they're making these statements has no mechanism to ensure the statements are valid.

Our best results in meeting accessibility has been to incorporate them into design standards guide and in a brand's style guide, right next to approved fonts, colors, logos, etc. Teams never think about asking for accessibility standards but always make sure to references the other guides.

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

#47

Post by scoot » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

geraldwhen wrote: post #44

scoot wrote: post #36

You just can't expect a script to make a website accessible. Accessibility cannot be fully automated. Sure there are tools that can highlight some issues, and provide guided review to help find others, but there's no panacea. Instead, start with a UI library that already applies accessibility best practices, such as Material UI [0], then follow the guidance provided for each component (a library can't do everything f…

That’s great until design decides that modals shouldn’t close with the escape key and users should be forced to scroll a text field and click a toggle to navigate away. Then some data elsewhere on the page animates to a new value, and the user should be notified of this data immediately. Designers don’t like using prebuilt components. I haven’t found one yet that can live with constraints.

It sounds like design needs to be educated on accessibility. That said, all this and more is possible with Material UI. It's designed for flexibility and customizability in both functionality and appearance.

That doesn't make it okay to break accessibility though.

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

#48

Post by ffhhj » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

Accessible pages, like no-javascript pages, should be dedicated, mixing accessibility with general UX is simply not working, this adds too many constraints on design that companies don't want to sacrifice. Browsers should allow users to request various levels of accessibility thru headers.

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

#49

Post by spacebanana7 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

idreyn wrote: post #8

Increasingly I think the screenreader/ARIA proposition of navigating a (linearized ordering of) elements on a 2D page is fundamentally limiting for blind users. The web needs a more robust model of application state from which text, audio, and GUI representations can be derived. Our applications clearly structure "objects" and their "methods" under the hood, and it should be possible to present these more directly to…

I agree. For visually impaired users, HTML/sceenreaders are simply wasteful layers between them and the core behaviour/data of an application.

In an ideal world, we could have entirely different clients that focus on audio-touch interfaces like a some sort of keyboard driven Alexa skill.

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

#50

Post by daniel-cussen » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

biggerChris wrote: post #7

daniel-cussen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a descendant of a totally blind man, but with like 20/12 vision myself, I just have to agree. Dude eyes are the ultimate threat detector, they're essential, and there's so many people trying to take advantage of vision impairment. They need it to be perfect stereotypical blindness to give a single unit of fuck about the problem, no compensating for limitations, all or nothing. Never look from another point of view…

Honestly. My eye sight started improving when I started riding my bike everyday. So. Do you have a brand of fish oil we all can look into and research?

UP, Ultra Pure, couldn't find it in the States, they sell it in Chile, in Liga Chilena Contra la Epilepsia, that place has the best prices. It's clearly the best, comes from the clean waters of the South Pacific, it's palpably purer.