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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

#271

Post by freedomben »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #247
freedomben wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I'm a very big critic of Steve Jobs and Apple, but when they prioritize stuff, they can do some damn fine work, and to this day they still have some terrific a11y features. Relatedly, "I don't care about the bloody ROI" was quite an incredible moment.

Well, I believe they are serious about privacy, despite constant insinuations that they are not. I believe that Cook is totally serious, because he's a gay man who supports his community of shared interest. If there's one community that has some serious "skin in the game," when it comes to privacy, it's gay folks. There's places in the world, where it's worth your life, to be outed. But he's just one man, and no spri…

I agree that they are serious about privacy, though I'm not sure it means the same thing to them that it does to me. To me. Privacy includes not collecting data that isn't strictly needed to provide the feature. At their scale, perhaps they could reasonably argue that they need all the data about you in order to provide their service, so my standards don't necessarily indict them as reckless with data, but I do worry that the features they want to provide are increasingly including features that I don't necessarily want, but they still collect the data. In preparation for machine learning, I suspect they have justified storing enormous amounts of data from device usage that will help them. As a software engineer, I totally appreciate the importance of data for making decisions, but once you get in the mode of collecting analytics and usage data, you cross somewhat of a line of privacy. Companies like apple justify this by saying that Apple doesn't sell or release any of the data, it's purely used internally, and this is clearly 100 times better than the sellers of data, but it is still collecting invasive data in the first place.

I think ultimately the real Revelation will come when they either don't begin serious advertising, or they do.

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

#272

Post by austin-cheney »

nfw2 wrote: post #253
austin-cheney wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accessibility is not always cheap and easy. I am only saying it isn’t more expensive if you know what you are doing. In my 15 year career as a JavaScript developer all the biggest failures were directly attributed to poor training and leadership qualifying low standards. At some point people would do themselves a huge service by admitting they are too lazy/inept to train their staff and they deliver shit as a result.…

If the problem is needing more competent people, that tends to be an expensive problem to solve because competent people generally cost more to hire.

While that sounds logical it’s completely false in practice. Competent people need jobs just as much as incompetent people but it’s challenging to distinguish the two. Most employers are just happy to put bodies in seats and will adjust expectations accordingly.

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

#273

Post by tomrod »

rmbyrro wrote: post #141
tomrod wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Agreed, despite your justifications being cost-driven. A business is supposed to deliver. Accessibility is part of that. Much like we wouldn't accept rotten food at a restaurant in whole or in part, we shouldn't be okay with leaving out accessibility to at least some standard. If a restaurant can't deliver and serves rotten food, we should be okay with it going out of business. This holds for software companies that view accessibility as technical debt/#todo items.

Especially web accessibility standards are so tenplatizable and test driven now, there really is no excuse.

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

#274

Post by rmbyrro »

tomrod wrote: post #273
rmbyrro wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Agreed, despite your justifications being cost-driven. A business is supposed to deliver. Accessibility is part of that. Much like we wouldn't accept rotten food at a restaurant in whole or in part, we shouldn't be okay with leaving out accessibility to at least some standard. If a restaurant can't deliver and serves rotten food, we should be okay with it going out of business. This holds for software companies that…

Your comparison is flawed, in my opinion.

What you're saying is equivalent to a restaurant owner who doesn't serve meals adequate to allergic people is a jerk and should go out of business.

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

#275

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

freedomben wrote: post #271
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I believe they are serious about privacy, despite constant insinuations that they are not. I believe that Cook is totally serious, because he's a gay man who supports his community of shared interest. If there's one community that has some serious "skin in the game," when it comes to privacy, it's gay folks. There's places in the world, where it's worth your life, to be outed. But he's just one man, and no spri…

I agree that they are serious about privacy, though I'm not sure it means the same thing to them that it does to me. To me. Privacy includes not collecting data that isn't strictly needed to provide the feature. At their scale, perhaps they could reasonably argue that they need all the data about you in order to provide their service, so my standards don't necessarily indict them as reckless with data, but I do worry…

That's always been a basic philosophy of mine: "If I don't need it, I don't collect it."[0]

It's surprising (to me) that this has actually caused working partners to get peeved at me. They want to occasionally do things, like see when people originally signed up (for example, we keep last activity, but not original inception. Last activity is important for doing things like culling cruft, but there's really no use in knowing when someone signed up -except for vanity metrics).

If the "need" is "Occasionally want to look at vanity metrics," then that (to me) does not count as "justifies holding onto data."

In our latest app, it is a fairly small app that Serves a small community, but we are constantly getting Chinese hackers, trying to get in.

I won't be so arrogant, as to think they won't, eventually, get in, so we make sure that there's nothing in the liquor cabinet, if they finally break in.

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/welcome-to-little-green-viper/p...

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

#276

Post by extra88 »

threatofrain wrote: post #262
extra88 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have heard of this thing called "responsive web design," (RWD) it's pretty popular. RWD is all about it not being better to make two websites (in that case, "mobile" vs. "desktop") instead of one.

In some ways this is similar. With responsive design we're talking about orthogonal views in the sense that given enough effort, the mobile and desktop experiences can be completely different, but of course in practice we're going to reuse components to save time. So just like we have desktop and mobile views, I'm just proposing one more view where you also get to reuse some of your components, and where you get to p…

There are already ways to make all those things conditional without creating an entirely new view.

Only occasionally does the "accessible way" need to be in addition to what was planned all along, such as up, down, left, right arrow buttons beside a draggable map, you don't need a whole separate map for that.

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

#277

Post by acdha »

seanwilson wrote: post #53

Nice practical article. Accessibility is really important, but one of my pet peeves is when people call developers lazy for not making apps accessible by default. There really is a lot of concepts to learn, conflicting priorities, and tools to get familiar with, on top of making the business case to do it. Most developers and designers I've worked aren't that familiar with WCAG rules either. By the way, the blue on y…

I agree that there are a lot of other things to learn but accessibility is a legal and moral imperative, not just a nice to have feature. I think “lazy” might not be the right word since many developers don’t even know that they’re cutting corners, so perhaps it’s better to use “negligence” and realize that our field culturally encourages it rather than just blaming individuals.

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

#278

Post by acdha »

Zanfa wrote: post #263
mcguire wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most developers and designers are unfamiliar with a major portion of their jobs. That says quite a bit about professionalism in the software development field.

> Most developers and designers are unfamiliar with a major portion of their jobs. Using spans with event listeners instead of anchor tags is my biggest pet peeve of incompetent frontend engineers. It’s like they go out of their way to take something that they get for free and then spend time and effort to break it.

One of the really frustrating parts of that is that they’ll blame accessibility for the extra work rather than admitting that they signed up to duplicate built-in functionality and blew it. I had that recently with some form validation where it went through this “wow that was a lot of work!” cycle and it was like “an HTML 101 form would have taken 15 minutes”.

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

#279

Post by acdha »

toast0 wrote: post #31
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…

Separate but equal isn't equal, and in the US, the ADA requires reasonable accommodation. It's not reasonable to require a second, separate app to cater to people with low vision/low dexterity, and chances are it's not going to have equal functionality (how many separate apps have equal functionality). It's better to require platforms to make accommodation a core feature (which they have largely done!) and require de…

> It's not reasonable to require a second, separate app to cater to people with low vision/low dexterity, and chances are it's not going to have equal functionality

Your first half of that sentence is debatable in absolute terms but in practice almost always right due to the second half. It can be reasonable to have an alternative version of something — for example, an audio or braille version of a printed document, or a ramp alternative to stairs – but the really hard part is actually keeping them in parity. If something is seen as a compliance obligation, I’d be shocked if that actually happened versus resources being allocated mostly to the extent that they’re cheaper than legal fees.

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

#280

Post by acdha »

godelski wrote: post #116
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…

I had a similar experience but with my partner. Wrote a longer rant[0]. It's quite hard to notice a lot of these things before you actually have to deal with them. I knew ramps were needed and automatic doors, but the shock was more about little things. But, a big thing I've noticed is that like 90% of things that would help us would make lives easier for normal people too. Which this was a big thing that opened my m…

> But, a big thing I've noticed is that like 90% of things that would help us would make lives easier for normal people too.

This was a really common observation among the parents in our circles. You really notice things like missing curb cuts or bumpy sidewalks when pushing a stroller, so many things where only needing one hand is really helpful when holding a baby, having restroom stalls big enough to accommodate a wheelchair also means a stroller or second kid can fit, etc. A lot of people went from sort of vaguely thinking this is important to vocally backing accessibility at public meetings.

One important example: public bathrooms. Hatred of homeless people has driven a lot of American cities not to have them, which means people with certain conditions stay in or avoid certain areas. It also sucks for parents and I’ve noticed at planning meetings that one of those things which should not happen but does is that, say, an older low income person saying they’d use a park more if it had a background does not get the same response as, say, the affluent mom saying the same thing. It’d be nice if that didn’t require haggling but if it takes a coalition to get fixed at least it still happens. I noticed something similar with our local bike path expansion - motorized wheelchair users are looking forward to a smooth, safe, fast path, too.

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