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Where's the fun in accessibility?

elisehe.in

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Re: Where's the fun in accessibility?

#11

Post by eternityforest »

onion2k wrote: post #4

It's good that the author is questioning how to make accessible content in ways that make the experience of using a site better for everyone, but it's incredibly disappointing that they scattered the article with points saying (I'm paraphrasing) "I'm not visually impaired so I can't know what this is like!" You can know. Just talk to people who use assistive tech. Don't guess at how to improve what you build. Hire a…

Some of those features also can be helpful when hardware starts failing. If a display breaks on a laptop, you can possibly use some screen reader features to save your work. And obviously, things that help the hearing impaired also help those who don't have working speakers at the moment.

Re: Where's the fun in accessibility?

#12

Post by eternityforest »

politelemon wrote: post #8

> We’ve been taught that UX is not only about function, but about delight, whimsy, wit, and beauty. Is this real? If this is really the case, it would explain why my observations of UX feel delightfully negative. There's too much focus on themselves and not on the user.

I haven't been taught that by programming blogs at least. They all seem to say(although I ignore them) that the ideal UI is the command line.

Re: Where's the fun in accessibility?

#15

Post by rikroots »

For the first example - the Agency homepage with the playful mouse pointer interaction - I managed to get this working with a keyboard-controlled pointer. Controlling mouse via keyboard is a standard accessibility feature in both MacOS[1] and Windows[2].

I've never investigated this functionality before - which is shameful, as my main side project is a JS library targeted at making the HTML canvas element more accessible to users (like the author, I have no need for accessibility enhancements in my daily work or life). So I popped over to my library's test/demo page and followed the instructions for invoking pointer move/press/release/etc actions via the keyboard. From my brief investigation, the actions seem to work as expected in those demos that test/use pointer hover/click interactions.[3]

Reports of shortcomings in my library, when it comes to accessibility issues, are always very welcome!

[1] - Control the mouse pointer using the keyboard in MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh27469/mac

[2] - Control the mouse pointer using the keyboard in Windows https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-mouse-keys-t...

[3] - Scrawl-canvas testing and demo page - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demonstrations

Re: Where's the fun in accessibility?

#16

Post by MrYellowP »

I remember when "accessibility" was the buzzword for video game companies to destroy everything challenging and interesting in their games for the crowd who, and I'm phrasing this nicely, needed a much, much lower bar of entry.

Coincidentially that crowd also has looser wallets.

Re: Where's the fun in accessibility?

#17

Post by wmwragg »

ximm wrote: post #7

I guess the issue is that visually we can scan a page and and experience many things at once. Also, there are many ways to move the mouse cursor from one position to the next. There is a lot to work with. I am wondering whether there are similar mechanisms for non-visual, non-mouse contexts. I don't think the solution is to add an endless stream of background noises to our websites. I fear the article is correct when…

An article[1] from the edbrowse submission a few days ago[2] goes into a lot of detail about this.

[1] http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32148474

Re: Where's the fun in accessibility?

#18

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

onion2k wrote: post #10
ximm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can sympathize with the author. I try to learn about accessibility in my free time, so I cannot "hire a diverse team/consultants". I also don't want to annoy random people I meet with questions about their disabilities. So instead I read a lot. And when I write something, I am transparent about the fact that I do not have first hand experience (at least not to the point that I was unable to complete a task due to a…

I also don't want to annoy random people I meet with questions about their disabilities. You obviously need to be tactful about it, but if you're genuine and willing to listen to people about the problems they face and you're in a position to solve them, in even just a tiny way, they won't be annoyed. Totally the opposite in fact. People assuming things like "they'll be annoyed to talk about the problems they face" i…

Everything is discrimination by these standards. Disability is a personal thing for a lot of people, it's perfectly reasonable to be hesitant to ask people about it.

In addition you can bet not many disabled people want to be a walking survey of the problems they face. To that effect, you can check any disability forums, which are littered by engineers wanting feedback on their products. Hell, just look at the top post of /r/blind written 6 days ago.

Re: Where's the fun in accessibility?

#19

Post by zichy »

Theodores wrote: post #3

If your website is commercial in nature then it can help to get rid of the buzzwords such as 'SEO' and 'accessibility' to just think of putting the customer first. In a real retail business, what would you do for customers that needed some type of assistance, whether reading labels or navigating the store? Hopefully you would help them out as needed with a customer first ethos and not treat them as 'disabled'. If any…

>get rid of the buzzwords such as 'SEO' and 'accessibility' to just think of putting the customer first

>a customer first ethos and not treat them as 'disabled'

That's a weird way of phrasing it. It sounds to me like you try to play accessibility and customer focus against each other. I'd argue that speaking about "customers" instead of "humans" is counterproductive and only some kind of commercial websites like online shops could be compared to a retail businesses. Also, "accessibility" is not a buzzword.

Maybe you could get comfortable with the term universal/inclusive design?

https://sayyeah.com/digital-insights/universal-design-access...

>Text might be below the size Google deems 'accessible'

Which Google guidelines you are referring to?

>Making that text big and chunky might upset designers who want the customer to be browsing by pictures not words.

Do you assume good design and accessibility can't go together? Developing an accessible product generally means that ideally everyone involved has some basic knowledge about a11y. I totally agree that using "SEO" to justify certain decisions is (almost always) a bad idea. Referring to detailed guidelines like the WCAG may be helpful in order to get everyone on board. Obviously designers will get frustrated when told without explanation or context that their design needs to be changed in favor of a11y.

Re: Where's the fun in accessibility?

#20

Post by bobthepanda »

onion2k wrote: post #4

It's good that the author is questioning how to make accessible content in ways that make the experience of using a site better for everyone, but it's incredibly disappointing that they scattered the article with points saying (I'm paraphrasing) "I'm not visually impaired so I can't know what this is like!" You can know. Just talk to people who use assistive tech. Don't guess at how to improve what you build. Hire a…

Also, a big step is just bothering to turn on and use the assistive technologies that come out of the box, or you can do without much difficulty.

Mac comes out of the box with VoiceOver (I think iOS does too.) A lot of software either has directly or as an extension colorblindness filters.

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