Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

I want to echo this comment.

The effort to bring people to use the latest browser is understandable. For one, it forces developers to "drop" bad practices which are now "restricted" or banned in modern browser specs. For two we can bring the latest security protection browser offer to user. How I wish we could just screw every webpage on this planet and rewrite HTML spec and make it fresh and restricted.

But, it is important to note that blind users have very difficult time to use web sites that are JS-heavy and plugin-heavy. ARIA is a great solution, but honestly, even popular sites are slowly adopting it and even so Javascript interaction can be very hard to get right for a blind user.

They can still use chrome and firefox if the website provides text-based version. But the problem is still most websites don't provide text-based version.

Shameless plug: I did my senior project on this subject.[1] In this project I used gmail.js which the author did an amazing job of extracting the DOM for us (it was also on HN). I wish a website could just provide these "JS" APIs publicly so developers like me who wish to let people to interact with the website over voice without us "scarping" the API. Think of the ideal REST practice where one uses HAETOS to drive resource discovery. Imagine every website has a "IFTTT" protocol!

It is unfortunate, but today, even there are millions of blind users, they have to "adopt" to the latest technology with pain, at least this is what the blind users I've asked before and after the project said.

Anyway, my project code is a mess, but it was fun to write add-on and try blind-user tools on my own.

[1]: http://ccvcl.org/mediawiki/images/archive/3/37/2014051804182...

I think HN self selects for a bunch of corner cases that are atypical to the problem google is trying to correct for. People who have refused to update due to dislike of a certain OS, browser configuration, have extensions that limit functionality or otherwise knowingly don't update their browser for a specific reason based on technical understanding or aesthetic choice are the corner cases. Obviously, there are just a bunch of non-technical people using ie7 who have 5million toolbars and can't figure out why google looks so shitty. These people need to upgrade their shit, because when something doesn't work they can't fix it. Web devs are sick of having to develop with their hands tied behind their backs because a fuckton of people are using the old browser their computer shipped with in 2007.

It sounds like you're using a PowerPC-based Mac.

Have you considered installing a variant of Linux on it, so that you can use a new Firefox?

Another problem with so many of today's "appified", needlessly animated websites is that they are rarely as accessible (as in, usable by people with disabilities) as their simpler, text-and-image-based predecessors used to be.

Just because and cool CSS3 hacks are part of the W3C standard doesn't mean that you can use them wherever you want. If you use CSS3 hacks to convey meaning, that meaning is lost not only to old IE users but also to anyone who is visually challenged. Sooner or later, this is going to become a taboo, and all of us who did it will drop our heads in shame as if we'd used tables for layout. (Tables were, and still are, a W3C standard after all.)

On the other hand, I do want to discourage people from using IE7. How do we do that without turning every webpage into a shiny animated app? My answer would be simple: wrap all my CSS and JS links in a conditional comment that hides them from older versions of IE. Give those users the authentic Lynx experience. After all, it will probably be prettier, not to mention more accessible, than any "graceful degradation" hack that I can cook up.

Older design? That's too nice. What about no design? (Remember, your site should still work fine with no design.)

Just a few suggestions... first: post to a local mac user group forum near you. second: consider a virtual machine or dual-boot to a linux OS...

I don't know what programs you use regularly that tie you to OSX, and can understand the need for them, that said, there are options that are available to you.