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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

#141

Post by rmbyrro »

tomrod wrote: post #135
rmbyrro wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey bro, it's unnecessary to call people jerks. Assume they're ignorant at worse, or really incapable of juggling all plates. Running a small software shop, especially a startup, is extremelly hard and stressful. You're constantly struggling to survive financially. To a lot of folks, this alone already takes up everything they have to give.

I say this with full understanding of the situation you are describing: ignoring accessibility is not a reasonable cost saving measure, to a degree is immoral, and ignores that almost everyone will be temporary or permanently in need of accessibility at some point. Not every object needs accessibility - a flashlight might not need braille - but this should be the absolute exception that proves a business is viable in…

It's not about saving costs. When you don't know how you're gonna pay next month salaries and bills, you don't have mental capacity to think about screen readers, font sizes or whatever

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

#142

Post by ttepasse »

saalweachter wrote: post #101
curtisblaine wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it chosen because it reads "ally" in leetspeak? Agree it's not incredibly accessible.

That's probably a factor in its popularity, but it's in the category of "numerical contractions" like i18n [internationalization] or l10n [localization]. Numerical contractions were already very popular in the space of "making things work correctly for more people" [accessibility, localization, internationalization...].

Sometimes, when I read these contractions too much, I’m starting to think I should short my first name as “T1m”.

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

#143

Post by neomantra »

Just today, I was making a product landing page and wanted it to be accessible. Since we have Instagram, YouTube, and GitHub, I wanted to get the icons from those sources. I looked at how to ensure that with SVG and found this SO [1].

While YouTube does not supply SVGs, the SVGs from Instagram [2] and GitHub [3] did not include any a11y metadata. I was really surprised by this, given the massive user bases thereof, both consumer and developer. Maybe that's because it's not universal what should be there?

So I had to insert it myself. I was scared to make a repo sharing these changes, but I will drop the GitHub one here:

In `` element I added:

    role="img"
    aria-label="[title + description]"
Nested inside I put:

    GitHub Octocat Logo
    An Octocat shadow in front of a white circle
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4697100/accessibility-re...

[2] https://about.meta.com/brand/resources/instagram/instagram-b...

[3] https://github.com/logos

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

#144

Post by mcguire »

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…

Or, you could just not have the "low-*" versions and tell anyone who needed or wanted them, "Tough."

I wouldn't advise it, though.

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

#145

Post by zymhan »

jakey_bakey wrote: post #13
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

I think your post has personality, as it is written.

Just my unsolicited, non-expert advice: don't make your writing more generic just to appeal to a wider audience.

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

#146

Post by zymhan »

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.

I think you're being too harsh, it's simply a form of rhetoric.

Surely you could've shared your take on the actual substance of the post?

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

#147

Post by mardifoufs »

zymhan wrote: post #138
kriops wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world is cost not a good argument? In fact, assume cost is not a good argument – then why should it even be legal to compile programs that aren’t universally accessible? It’s always beneficial, and just a matter of cost after all. Or are you perhaps being completely one-sided and unreasonable?

You're shoving the strawman down the slippery slope. That is not an honest/genuine question.

I don't get where the strawman is, the parent comment said:

>Usually the best argument opposing accessibility is that the authors/developers don’t know what they are doing. When they say accessibility is too expensive that’s what they really mean, and it’s not a good argument.

There's no slippery slope either. If lack of accessibility is just a matter of incompetence and not cost, then there's no downside or cost to adding it everywhere. I don't get the point of not acknowledging that there are costs to accessibility. I get that it's not a good justification in most cases, but there's no benefit in denying that it has costs too. It just discredits the rest of the argument imo.

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

#148

Post by nfw2 »

austin-cheney wrote: post #109

The universal good, and unappreciated reality, about accessibility is that it benefits everyone. Wheelchair ramps aren’t limited to wheelchairs. I have above average hearing despite my advancing age and I choose to apply subtitles to digital movies about half the time because it provides me a better more enriching experience. Solving for color contrast limitations benefits everyone even when people have perfect visio…

It is not universally true that accessibility efforts always benefit everyone. For example, implementing ARIA markup on HTML only benefits those using assistive technology.

If developers don't know how to make web services accessible, it IS expensive because it will take time to train them. Developer time is often a company's biggest expense.

Moreover, not every web product is simple to make accessible even by experts because eyes can process a lot of information very quickly across two dimensions, and UX designers often take this for granted. Translating complex experiences into comprehensible text-only applications often takes creativity and effort.

I'm not saying accessibility isn't important, but these kinds of arguments that it is always cheap and easy often actually make it harder for engineers to get the resources they need to implement it successfully.

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

#149

Post by LoganDark »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #77

Fun fact: it's far more than 16% because people tend to forget the two super most obvious accessibility requirements: being able to read text, and being able to interact with elements. About half of the planet has a visual disability that's bad enough to require a corrective medical device, and over 10% of the planet is just plain old . Tiny UI elements and small text are easily overlooked, huge problems.

> About half of the planet has a visual disability that's bad enough to require a corrective medical device

Can you clarify how many people who merely need corrective lenses need to also rely on software accessibility features? The way you use "about half the planet" in your comment implies that every visual impairment is equal, and that all visual impairments result in increased accessibility needs.

My only accessibility need, funnily enough, is a high-DPI display, despite technically having impaired vision, because my vision at close distances (even corrected) is so much better than 20/20 that regular displays look distractingly pixelated to me.

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

#150

Post by kstrauser »

tomrod wrote: post #135
rmbyrro wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey bro, it's unnecessary to call people jerks. Assume they're ignorant at worse, or really incapable of juggling all plates. Running a small software shop, especially a startup, is extremelly hard and stressful. You're constantly struggling to survive financially. To a lot of folks, this alone already takes up everything they have to give.

I say this with full understanding of the situation you are describing: ignoring accessibility is not a reasonable cost saving measure, to a degree is immoral, and ignores that almost everyone will be temporary or permanently in need of accessibility at some point. Not every object needs accessibility - a flashlight might not need braille - but this should be the absolute exception that proves a business is viable in…

I think it’s only immoral to ignore it if you know it’s an issue in the first place. I was never taught about it in undergrad. I knew that blind people existed, but hadn’t been around a blind person using a computer to appreciate what a pain in the ass it could be.

Whether it’s from disregard or ignorance, the end result for users is the same: lack of accessibility. I don’t think the well meaning but ignorant person is bad, though. I’m sure I’ve inadvertently made software that was challenging in ways I’d never have anticipated. “Click Cancel in the next 10 seconds to stop erasing your hard drive. 9. 8.” (Guy with ALS desperately tries to move the cursor over to the Cancel button.)

There are so many ways a person’s abilities can be different that the norm. Someone can be quite empathetic and still miss a lot of things they could be doing better.

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