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

jacobbartlett.substack.com

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

#21

Post by eropple »

maxloh wrote: post #14
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.

A small base of users at any given time. Almost everyone needs "accessibility" eventually. You will, too, if you're lucky enough to live that long.

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

#22

Post by PaulHoule »

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.

I work for an information service that sells subscriptions to academic and other users.

We don't have a legal mandate per se to be accessible but many of our subscribers do have a mandate that services they buy have to be accessible. Many of our customers insist on it because they have a legal mandate to be accessible. The university that we are a part of got sued because it made web sites that were not accessible

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/10/fifty-college...

and in principle any school could get in trouble for buying products and services that aren't accessible. So it is part of the contracts we sign now, we do accessibility audits regularly to stay ahead of issues, sometimes we have have customers who do their own audits. Thus a11y is a major priority here so I have learned all about ARIA (our app is a great fit) not to mention the real formulas for color spaces, contrast ratios and how to use a screen reader.

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

#23

Post by zooq_ai »

Your App is successful because you didn't spend time on useless things like a11y, i18n during the p-m-f stage. If you look at every successful product in history, they didn't focus on a11y or i18n right from the bat.

Now, that it is successful, you can think about it and spend resources.

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

#24

Post by diggan »

jakey_bakey wrote: post #12
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

> 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

It's not a question of it being too hard or easy, but as always, a question of priorities.

Say you can either build feature A which is expected to open up the product to be used by 1% more users, as people been asking for that feature. Or you can build feature B, which enables motionsick people to use your app without getting sick from your wasteful animations. This will help 0.001% of your current users, when you have 10,000 users in total lets say.

Not saying it's right or wrong, but I understand why people (managers/owners) make the choice to do feature A instead of feature B, especially in a startup-context where it might be the (imaginary or not) choice between surviving or not.

I'm personally in the camp of thinking about accessibility as part of all the work done, but it's not exactly the mainstream workflow.

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

#25

Post by jonshariat »

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.

I follow this as part of my role and the number of lawsuits has been increasing steadily over the years. Last year was 4,600 (for websites/apps) in the US. So might not feel a lot but of course the bigger your app is the bigger the target.

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

#26

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

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.

> What is the real liability for a scenario like this?

In the EU:

    As of 28 June 2025, companies must ensure that the newly marketed products and services covered by the Act are accessible. Member States may decide to make some exceptions. For instance, they can allow more time for the application of the new rules to service providers using self-service terminals. Microenterprises (i.e., a small business with fewer than 10 employees) which provide services also are exempted from the obligations of the Act. Nevertheless, all microenterprises are encouraged to make their products and services accessible to persons with disabilities.
https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1202&intPageId=55...

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

#28

Post by morder »

maxloh wrote: post #14
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.

Until you're disabled.

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

#29

Post by CuriouslyC »

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.

The opposite of that actually. Nobody is going to bother with websites if it's just data that gets slurped up by AI and fed back to people, it's a lot of work for no payout. People who make websites are going to make them interactive multimedia experiences that pull you away from the chatbot to feel something. The New York Times the information dump has no future, the New York Times the interactive multimedia social game and event hub with emotionally stirring stories, pictures and video can survive.

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

#30

Post by jnovek »

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…

As a person who uses accessibility features on his devices, this attitude is why we depend on regulation to ensure that we (disabled people) can do stuff. No company implements accessibility features out of the kindness of their heart.
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