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3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

fionatg.com

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Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#121

Post by pascalo »

EnderMB wrote: post #110
pascalo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good you mention application and ARIA ... I've just come out of a project where the initial brief completely disregarded anything in terms of accessibility. Full on angular app, no native forms or form elements (because they "look ugly" apparently). Then the ultimate end client wants to go live but forgot to mention they had a mandatory accessibility audit. So I've spent quite a bit of time working out how to make th…

Out of interest, did you do any user testing for this site? I've worked on sites that have required a legal accessibility audit and in my experience a lot of screen readers don't even know what ARIA is, let alone use it. Like users that stick with older browsers a number of users use old screen reading tools.

Unfortunately there wasn't much budget for anything beyond the build. But the accessibility audit was lead by visually impaired people, and they did suggest what the benchmark was I had to meet and we iterated over that by me making changes and them flagging up what else needed to be done.

I also have the impression that there are quite a few people with older browsers out there because of the screen reader setup, and I don't think that's a good thing, but maybe it's a matter of doing what we're doing to older browsers in general: phase out support.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#122

Post by vegardx »

Speaking as a colour-blind person (protanopia) I welcome this kind of thoughts with open arms. There's actually not much you have to do in order to make a website at least readable if you just have some basic concepts in mind when designing.

The latest fad with soft pink and grey is really bad, almost unreadable for me. Luckily, I can usually just select the text and get blue/white contrast, which makes it more readable, but lately I've seen people override this too, or simply just hijack the ability to select text. I could open it in a screenreader or something similar, but usually I just close the tap and move along. Just keep that in mind if you decide to override how the browser behaves.

A funny side note, which was very clear on this website: When you're using pie charts, also know that it's almost impossible for colour-blind people to read them. The only two I could pick out was Chrome and IE11.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#123

Post by alistairSH »

DanBC wrote: post #113
leorocky wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This website is even difficult to read on a regular desktop browser (too wide, downvoted comments increasingly impossible to read causing eye strain). I recommend using your own content script with Chrome. This may not help on your iPad but on Android you can use Firefox with your own userscript. It's the only way I can tolerate it. It would probably take a competent someone a few hours to fix the readability issues…

Hard to read downvoted comments is a feature not a usability bug. Down voted comments are supposed to be hard for everyone to read.

I don't think a screen reader would pick up the down-voted comments as different from other comments. So, it's still broken from an accessibility standpoint.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#124

Post by krschultz »

nailer wrote: post #62
krschultz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strawman. Making a web site or mobile application accessible is about making it parseable to the accessibility application that the user with disability has installed on their machine. A text to speech app needs to be able to access all the content. Put the right tags on fields. Add alt tags on images. On Android, the Lint tool actually calls these things out. I have no idea what it feels like to use a scree…

> Show me a virtual machine that I can test with >> Making a web site or mobile application accessible is about making it parseable to the accessibility application that the user with disability has installed on their machine. He wants access to a VM (or many VMs) with the accessibility application that the user with disability has installed That doesn't sound like a straw man at all.

"But the inability to replicate the experience in full, I think , inhibits catering to that demographic."

That makes me think of trying to see what it feels like to be inaccessible user, I'm picturing a VM that makes the screen fuzzy or something.

If all you want is a VM with the tools installed - that's pretty simple. I imagine every developer can make a VM with an OS in it, and there are plenty of free accessibility tools available for the OS of your choice: http://usabilitygeek.com/10-free-screen-reader-blind-visuall...

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#127

Post by claar »

fionatg wrote: post #49
eknkc wrote: post #6

I hate the font choice of this article.

I think its a love/hate thing with my site theme. I've had a lot of comments that it looks fantastic. I think I'll have to increase the font size at least.

I also recommend choosing a more standard font. Personally, I left the site after trying to read the article and finding it a quite unpleasant experience to try to read.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#128

Post by CJefferson »

seanbehan wrote: post #11

Show me a virtual machine that I can test with, that puts me in the shoes of a user w/ a disability, and I'll develop with accessibility in mind. But the inability to replicate the experience in full, I think , inhibits catering to that demographic.

If you are on a mac:

1) Press apple+F5

2) Click 'Learn voiceover' and go through the short tutorial.

3) Open safari, go to your website, close eyes.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#129

Post by tendom »

I write sites for a government, and I most certainly write code to standards, then to aria, and finally pick apart any IE weirdness. This has been quite the fight over the years, but if we want to be considered professionals and called engineers, then we follow standards, and when an employer says "I want you to ignore standards because we don't need it" you have to say no, I'll do this right, or you can find someone else to do it. If we all did this from the start, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.

Re: 3% use IE9 and 14% have a disability. Why do we only cater for the former?

#130

Post by broseph »

It's interesting to see so many developers demanding an easier way to test whether a website is accessible.

> Show me a virtual machine that I can test with, that puts me in the shoes of a user w/ a disability, and I'll develop with accessibility in mind.

> Well to be honest I can test my code in IE9 to see if it works. But I have no idea how a disabled person is experiencing my website, I do put all the "alt" attributes etc...but it's hard to imagine it.

Turn off your monitor. Turn your laptop brightness all the way down. That's what it's like to use your website while blind. Basic screenreaders for the web cost zero dollars and could not be easier to install [0]. A screenreader for Mac OS [1] costs zero dollars and is already installed on your machine.

Stop pretending that these tools are mysterious. You or someone you know might have no choice but to become an expert screenreader user tomorrow. Have a little bit of compassion.

[0] http://www.chromevox.com/

[1] https://www.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/

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