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How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

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Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#31

Post by TimByte »

bebe9494i4 wrote: post #8

It is revealing how people with disabilities are treated, just to walk on sidewalk as a deaf person. Most cyclicts assume they have a priority on sidewalks, and will ring bell to enforce it. If you do not jump out of their way in 2 seconds, you get rammed. Cyclists know I can not hear them (I am wearing big noise cancelling headphones). Yet they still insist on their imaginary priority on sidewalks. I was forced to r…

Sidewalks have to be usable by people who can't hear, people moving slowly, kids, older people etc. If a cyclist is on a sidewalk and can't safely pass without the pedestrian reacting instantly, they're the one creating the problem

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#32

Post by TimByte »

Planktonne wrote: post #6

> revealed invisible Interesting that the language of sight is so prevalent that it appears in this very title twice. Echoing other comments, this would be a stronger article if it went into more specifics, but the AI voice precludes that meaningfully.

The "invisible" point is interesting, although I'm not sure I'd read too much into it. Visual metaphors are so baked into English that avoiding all of them can start to feel a bit performative unless the wording is actually excluding someone

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#33

Post by mamcx »

In general you WANNA see any people using your app.

Read an "accessibility" spec or a requirement or a UX "good practice" is not a substitute for see how people use it!

One of my anecdotes from back in the day: The secretary of a school that use the app I help develop call about problems reading data, that comes in CD. We can't do much by phone so I travel to the town to try to debug on site (bring dev tools in the day where that means diskettes and cds, we were transitioning from FoxPro 2.6 DOS to Visual Fox Windows 95).

Eventually after some time the secretary put the coffee cup in the CD tray.

Go figure!

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#34

Post by TimByte »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #7
Planktonne wrote: post #6

> revealed invisible Interesting that the language of sight is so prevalent that it appears in this very title twice. Echoing other comments, this would be a stronger article if it went into more specifics, but the AI voice precludes that meaningfully.

> Interesting that the language of sight is so prevalent that it appears in this very title twice. Well, it appears once in "invisible", and once in "blind"... but I don't see why "blind" is a surprise when talking about someone blind. There is no reference to sight in "reveal".

Yeah, blind seems unavoidable there, since it's literally about a blind client

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#35

Post by TimByte »

miki123211 wrote: post #27

The annoying and counterintuitive part of accessibility work is that there are some architectural decisions that are very hard to undo, don't seem that significant, but will absolutely bite you when you need to implement accessibility. If you decide on a GUI framework which doesn't communicate semantics to the underlying APIs properly, you have no good options. Either you rewrite your entire project in a different fr…

The web has its own problems, but at least bad HTML is often still visible enough to repair. A custom canvas-like desktop UI can be basically a black box to assistive tech

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#36

Post by Planktonne »

TimByte wrote: post #32
Planktonne wrote: post #6

> revealed invisible Interesting that the language of sight is so prevalent that it appears in this very title twice. Echoing other comments, this would be a stronger article if it went into more specifics, but the AI voice precludes that meaningfully.

The "invisible" point is interesting, although I'm not sure I'd read too much into it. Visual metaphors are so baked into English that avoiding all of them can start to feel a bit performative unless the wording is actually excluding someone

> Visual metaphors are so baked into English

This is the point I am making.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#37

Post by whycome »

jmyeet wrote: post #29
Planktonne wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In distracted driving cases, you're behind the wheel of a vehicle that is capable of harming others; that's why it leads to legal liability. In situations where you are not likely to cause harm, "act[ing] in a reasonable fashion to mitigate risks for yourself and others" does not require anything from you.

All of this is really making my point. Being a pedestrian does not absolve you of all responsibility to mitigate harm. If you cycled at all you’d quickly learn just how entitled and oblivious so many pedestrians act. Cyclists do stupid and dangerous things too. Believe me I am aware. I have to anticipate those too. But, in my experience, nobody acts with more carelessness and selfishness than pedestrians. And I say t…

With greater powers come greater responsibilities.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#38

Post by Planktonne »

jmyeet wrote: post #29
Planktonne wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In distracted driving cases, you're behind the wheel of a vehicle that is capable of harming others; that's why it leads to legal liability. In situations where you are not likely to cause harm, "act[ing] in a reasonable fashion to mitigate risks for yourself and others" does not require anything from you.

All of this is really making my point. Being a pedestrian does not absolve you of all responsibility to mitigate harm. If you cycled at all you’d quickly learn just how entitled and oblivious so many pedestrians act. Cyclists do stupid and dangerous things too. Believe me I am aware. I have to anticipate those too. But, in my experience, nobody acts with more carelessness and selfishness than pedestrians. And I say t…

A pedestrian walking in a place where pedestrians are expected is not endangering cyclists. We're not talking about cycle lanes or crosswalks: we're talking about places where cyclists aren't supposed to be.

There is no requirement to mitigate all potential harms caused to unexpected hostile sources by the direct actions of unexpected hostile sources.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#39

Post by mikestew »

scragz wrote: post #26
bebe9494i4 wrote: post #8

It is revealing how people with disabilities are treated, just to walk on sidewalk as a deaf person. Most cyclicts assume they have a priority on sidewalks, and will ring bell to enforce it. If you do not jump out of their way in 2 seconds, you get rammed. Cyclists know I can not hear them (I am wearing big noise cancelling headphones). Yet they still insist on their imaginary priority on sidewalks. I was forced to r…

and then you ride in the street and drivers yell "get on the sidewalk" and try to hit you.

That isn’t the fault of the sidewalk users, don’t make it their problem.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#40

Post by singpolyma3 »

bebe9494i4 wrote: post #8

It is revealing how people with disabilities are treated, just to walk on sidewalk as a deaf person. Most cyclicts assume they have a priority on sidewalks, and will ring bell to enforce it. If you do not jump out of their way in 2 seconds, you get rammed. Cyclists know I can not hear them (I am wearing big noise cancelling headphones). Yet they still insist on their imaginary priority on sidewalks. I was forced to r…

Cycling on sidewalks is illegal here in Canada. Surprised it's being allowed elsewhere
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