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

Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

jacobbartlett.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 302 posts

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#11

Post by AlienRobot »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #2

Why have we settled upon annotating accessibility options onto a visual-first, generally high-precision/high-touch-density medium? Wouldn't it be better to just have a "low vision" version of the app, a "low touch accuracy" version of the app, etc? Then you could provide the accessibility-minded users with something customized to their needs, instead of trying to shoehorn accessibility onto a layout that might have n…

People said it would take twice as long to make two versions of the same frontend, so they spent a hundred times as long making crossplatform, responsive, accessible GUIs that often feel terrible to use no matter who the user is.

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#12

Post by jakey_bakey »

mikece wrote: post #5

What is the real liability for a scenario like this? Is there any grace period when a new app or startup becomes far more successful far sooner than expected? I imagine A11Y isn't a massive concern when it's not certain an idea will even work; outside of California I can't imagine being legally skewered if, once you attain unexpected success, you devote A11Y resources to address this issue.

It’s generally less of a legal liability and more of a reputation thing; as you grow you will get more and more users telling you off. See Wordle for an easy example.

Plus, its not that hard to do correctly, so the “we’re a startup on a critical burn rate” stops working as an excuse rather early

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#13

Post by jakey_bakey »

huqedato wrote: post #9

I would never agree with this statement of the author: "You won’t stop until everybody is using your app." Why ? All the apps I ever build (or participate in their development) where targeted to the fit the most, without sacrificing the business requirements or other important/critical aspects of the app. Otherwise will end-up with an unusable product.

That’s fair; I might have been a little gung-ho with this introductory flavour text

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#14

Post by maxloh »

mikece wrote: post #5

What is the real liability for a scenario like this? Is there any grace period when a new app or startup becomes far more successful far sooner than expected? I imagine A11Y isn't a massive concern when it's not certain an idea will even work; outside of California I can't imagine being legally skewered if, once you attain unexpected success, you devote A11Y resources to address this issue.

Maybe required by EU law?

Not a friend of accessibility though. It requires so much work to satisfy a small base of users.

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#15

Post by jakey_bakey »

ramshanker wrote: post #10

>>>>> We’re going to look at a dead simple, cat-themed, companion app I created especially for this article. Reading that sent me a chill. So now people are creating new app for each article! Reading further, I understand why it had to be done for this article, but just imagine. Now a days even one-off events have dedicated APP for visitors management. What next, one for each booth of the event.

I’ve done it before where I have a big sample project for multiple articles, but tbh it’s a lot easier for me as well to keep everything independent

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#17

Post by blowski »

threatofrain wrote: post #4
IncreasePosts wrote: post #2

Why have we settled upon annotating accessibility options onto a visual-first, generally high-precision/high-touch-density medium? Wouldn't it be better to just have a "low vision" version of the app, a "low touch accuracy" version of the app, etc? Then you could provide the accessibility-minded users with something customized to their needs, instead of trying to shoehorn accessibility onto a layout that might have n…

I think eventually we're heading to website as data with clients remixing the data in a way you don't expect; i.e., the final output will be a mishmash of sources.

Sounds like "the semantic web", which has been a great idea just about to take for about 20 years now.

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#18

Post by jtriangle »

>1 in 6 people think your app is broken

>16% of people have some kind of accessibility requirement

16% is 4 in 25 people, also no guarantee you'll be able to accommodate their specific accessibility requirement, depending on the app, and depending on the requirement.

That's not to say the app shouldn't be accessible, more that, you should think about when you spend the money to implement things like this, and how that money may best be spent to accommodate the highest number of people. Figure out who those people are, then figure out what your revenue growth would be if you captured those people, then compare those numbers to how much you'll have to spend to accommodate their needs. That's no different than any feature upgrade really.

Where you'll likely arrive at is the same place many apps have, unfortunately, arrived at, which is to probably just get text scaling quasi working and leave it at that because anything more is throwing cash into a black hole.

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#19

Post by [deleted] »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #2

Why have we settled upon annotating accessibility options onto a visual-first, generally high-precision/high-touch-density medium? Wouldn't it be better to just have a "low vision" version of the app, a "low touch accuracy" version of the app, etc? Then you could provide the accessibility-minded users with something customized to their needs, instead of trying to shoehorn accessibility onto a layout that might have n…

[deleted]

Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility

#20

Post by yau8edq12i »

jtriangle wrote: post #18

>1 in 6 people think your app is broken >16% of people have some kind of accessibility requirement 16% is 4 in 25 people, also no guarantee you'll be able to accommodate their specific accessibility requirement, depending on the app, and depending on the requirement. That's not to say the app shouldn't be accessible, more that, you should think about when you spend the money to implement things like this, and how tha…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN