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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

#191

Post by coolliquidcode »

mwcampbell wrote: post #184
coolliquidcode wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see how ADA requirements are practically impossible or completely break design. The high contrast of font to background requirement is so extreme that most major sites and even ADA related sites fail. Things like alt text is so time consuming it would be incredibly expensive to label all the images. Facebook has long resorted to using AI descriptions. Really it shouldn't be up to the developer it should be…

> The high contrast of font to background requirement is so extreme that most major sites and even ADA related sites fail. Why don't they just use high contrast? Why is readability so unfashionable?

It's very high contrast. The comment meta on these posts fail it. I'm pretty any text against the orange in this site fails it too.

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

#192

Post by curtisblaine »

csnover wrote: post #102
curtisblaine wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, it is just a numeronym[0], just like K8s for Kubernetes, g11n for globalisation, i18n for internationalisation, or L10n for localisation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym

I know that, but I thought the double meaning (numeronym reading like the word "ally") contributed to its success.

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

#193

Post by justinclift »

jakey_bakey wrote: post #88
huqedato wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, the target "audience" of an app is always specified before the design phase, in the Business Requirements Document and such and it's a defining element for the development. I've read/wrote hundreds of such documents in my career, yet I've never seen one that sets its target audience as 'everybody'.

If your startup has a Business Requirements Document, you launched too late

Or it's founders have been working at IBM a bit too much... ;)

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

#194

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

bhaney wrote: post #47
huqedato wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, the target "audience" of an app is always specified before the design phase, in the Business Requirements Document and such and it's a defining element for the development. I've read/wrote hundreds of such documents in my career, yet I've never seen one that sets its target audience as 'everybody'.

> the target "audience" of an app is always specified before the design phase, in the Business Requirements Document I could feel my soul leaving my body while reading this

TBF, if you don't understand the people that you're writing your app for, you're probably not going to be very successful.

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

#195

Post by ryandrake »

madeofpalk wrote: post #134
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 don't know - I'm always amused at how companies will try all sorts of growth hacks to eke out an extra 1% of DAU or whatever, but won't prioritise building products for human beings.

Companies do all sorts of (IMO insane) things to their apps that reduce their reach. Ignoring accessibility is just one of them.

I remember when I was in the app-writing business, and our devs would be constantly trying to bump up the minimum OS version supported. “See here, it says that only 10% of customer devices are on OS version 10.1 and below. We must bump our minimum version to 10.2 because us developers are tired of supporting this old shit and legacy code paths!”

This seems to me to be a lot like a salesman simply hanging up on 1 out of 10 of their potential customers. Makes no sense to me, but the version bumpers seem to be winning. The number of apps that no longer support my iPhone 7 is growing and growing…

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

#196

Post by friedtofu »

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2BX4yw8Z4Y

This post reminded me of a video I found really cool from a couple years back where Masahiro Sakurai(creator of Kirby, Super Smash Bros) talked about the importance of accessibility options and how Japanese developers - at the time, were lagging behind their western counterparts. He shows examples from and references Sony/Naughty Dog's 'The Last of Us'.

I'm not sure if this is something that Sakurai influenced or not, though I have noticed larger Japanese AAA game studios adding more and more features in terms of accessibility in the last couple years from studios such as Ryu Go Gotoko(Yakuza series), Capcom(Resident Evil, Street Fighter), and FromSoft(Dark Souls, Elden Ring)

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

#197

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

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…

Am I the only person who finds that subtitles often detract from the experience rather than enhance? I mostly watch either comedy shows or quiz shows, and am a fast reader. I find that the subtitles often come up too early and mess with the timing. Bad for the comedy; inexcusable for the quizzes.

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

#198

Post by dmazzoni »

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…

Assistive technology keeps growing and improving, though.

These days most operating systems already come with a voice control feature, designed for people with a motor impairment to use their device entirely by voice.

When you add alt text to an image button, you're not just enabling a blind user to hear a description, you're also enabling someone with carpal tunnel to speak the name of that button to activate it.

Most other accessibility APIs and preferences have multiple use cases like that, too.

That's why accessibility is designed the way it is: you're not modifying your app to work with specific disabilities, you're adding missing semantics and respecting user accessibility preferences, and assistive technology adapts things to work with different users.

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

#199

Post by dmazzoni »

bmitc wrote: post #161

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?

Every cross-platform GUI toolkit I've ever seen has accessibility support. You just need to learn how to use it.

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

#200

Post by npteljes »

sircastor wrote: post #57

For the last 12 years of his life, my father was in an electric wheelchair as a result of a stroke. Prior to that, I was vaguely aware of ADA compliance - basically because there were posted signs everywhere about parking spaces and restroom stalls. It was only after seeing the ease with which he could navigate the world in spite of his chair that I appreciated how important that law was, because I also saw so many t…

Really similar to backups in this regard. People don't appreciate it, until they need it. Then it goes from "I don't care, leave me alone, inconvenience" to "life-saving essential thing, why doesn't everyone care about this all the time".
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