For software accessibility, I get the importance, but I personally have no idea where to start. Cross-platform windowing, graphics, fonts, and audio are already insanely difficult. How does one do cross-platform accessibility?
Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
161–170 of 302 posts
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#162>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.
Has anyone cracked the nut of making accessible 3D modeling software?
I haven't found anything in that vein and I'm curious if anyone's working on it.
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#163Fun 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 accessib…
The idea that "they don't need text controls because most people have glasses, so their vision isn't bad enough" is one of the reasons projects start thinking about a11y too late.
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#164The 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…
Developers often think about accessibility, or disabilities, as a stark binary. You're either completely "disabled" (whatever that means), or your not.
However reality is much more nuanced. We're all, at best, temporarily "abled". Whether you need glasses, or your fingers have raw chicken juice on them for cooking, or you started going to the gym and your muscles ache too much to walk, or have a newborn and can't turn the TV up too loud.
We all go through various levels of impairments over our lives that can make use of assistive technologies. "Accessibility" really is just usability, and building products for real people.
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re being downvoted but this is true - most accessibility work seems to be generated by the accessibility industry, and is focused on short term fixes (modifying every website) rather than long-term solutions (fixing web browsers for disabled people).
How do you propose making all websites accessible at the Web browser level? That seems likely to be an intractable problem.
Browser modifications to detect and modify things like font size, selection and contrast, designs transformed into modified versions suitable for different disabilities using ML. Things that actually scale versus asking every website to modify their code for every disability, which will never happen.
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#166The 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 expert…
> ARIA markup on HTML only benefits those using assistive technology.
This specific case: ARIA labels also help search engine indexers find pages and extract information within pages more effectively. Excluding contemporary concerns about search engines intercepting advertising revenue by doing this, it is undoubtedly better for the able-sighted and blind user alike to have the option of finding an answer by visiting one page rather than two.
More philosophically: if accessibility makes things easier for people with a disability, that means it is easier for someone emulating a disability. For instance, whenever I'm holding something in one hand, I'm effectively emulating the abilities of a physically one-handed person, so if you make a design that works for one-handed people, you're also giving everyone else the extra opportunity to multitask.
> 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.
Parent poster wasn't saying it is cheap and neither would I, but whilst the incidental benefit of accessibility improvements to able-bodied people might not seem obvious, it always exists.
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#167Is why you go native UI methods as much as possible(iOS) it comes with a lot of accessibility by default. Also fonts and colours if possible as they provide dynamic sizing and contrast.
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#168The 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 expert…
> implementing ARIA markup on HTML only benefits those using assistive technology.
I'd argue that implementing ARIA markup properly also makes developers consider the general markup and structure of their product. Which in turn can lead to better UX in general, as it will lead to new insights. Yes, training developers does cost time so it is an expensive. That's often true for anything that will improve your product.
> 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.
Do you think that UX designers who take this for granted are good UX designers? I'd say that if they take it for granted that eyes can process more information, that they might need a refresher course on UX. Designs that lean heavily on visually cues and have a lot of them generally tend to be too complex and cause a visual overload.
A bonus benefit of ARIA markup is that if you have any automated UI tests they benefit from good ARIA markup and generally tend to be a bit more stable than tests using regular classes and IDs.
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re being downvoted but this is true - most accessibility work seems to be generated by the accessibility industry, and is focused on short term fixes (modifying every website) rather than long-term solutions (fixing web browsers for disabled people).
Are web browsers not accessible by default? If you make everything out of the core primitives they provide: lists, paragraphs, buttons, forms, etc, a screen reader will have no problem, and reader mode can let the user tweak it. It's only when people reconstruct primitives that assistive technology breaks. I don't see how you can fix that at the browser level except by taking away all the toys and breaking 99% of the…
> reader mode can let the user tweak it
Reader mode will help with some disabilities but not others.
> It's only when people reconstruct primitives that assistive technology breaks.
I like using the platform too, but users don't use primitives - they interact with higher level elements like carousels, profile pictures, comment boxes, and most new UI elements do not have accessibility industry ARIA role.
Re: Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 expert…
Another thing to consider is that some design choices seem to be in contention whether they're accessible or not. Eg dark mode makes it harder to read with astigmatism and creates visual hallucinations afterwards (it looks as though you're looking through blinds). Others swear that light mode hurts their eyes.
I'm in that second group. I have an inherited, untreatable retinal disease that causes photophobia (light sensitivity) and contrast issues. When contrast is high enough for me to read text in light mode, total light emission from the screen is just way, way too high. When I can't wrangle something into dark mode, I usually wear sunglasses at my computer desk. I know of someone (my sister's friend) whose retinal disease makes her so light sensitive that she cannot comfortably look up at the moon when she's outside on a clear night with a full moon.
What accessibility demands all users have is neither light mode nor dark mode, but the ability to easily choose between them (and maybe other color or contrast options).
This is why accessibility is closely tied to hackability and customizability. There isn't one solution that works for everybody. Accessibility is about giving users flexibility and control in the way they access, consume, and produce content, etc., so that they can do so in ways that meet their specific needs. It's about user agency in the same sense as ye olde ’user agent'— and that's why it's something that should resonate with every hacker.