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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

#151

Post by JadeNB »

bnralt wrote: post #123
austin-cheney wrote: post #109

The universal good, and unappreciated reality, about accessibility is that it benefits everyone. Wheelchair ramps aren’t limited to wheelchairs. I have above average hearing despite my advancing age and I choose to apply subtitles to digital movies about half the time because it provides me a better more enriching experience. Solving for color contrast limitations benefits everyone even when people have perfect visio…

What I dislike about all the comments here saying something similar is that it suggests that empathy only go in one direction. I sometimes run into situations where society isn’t set up for my needs in a particular way (for personal reasons, I won’t go into specific details). But my reaction isn’t “society should do whatever it takes to remove this issue I’m experiencing, no matter the cost.” I know that doing more t…

> But my reaction isn’t “society should do whatever it takes to remove this issue I’m experiencing, no matter the cost.”

I think few people have that reaction, and it's invidious to treat the statement "everyone should always think about accessibility" (true, for a properly charitably interpretation of "everyone" and "always") as equivalent to the statement "everyone's product should be equally accessible to everyone" (false and impossible).

The problem usually isn't that a reasonable, good-faith effort at accessibility isn't a perfect solution, but rather that no effort at accessibility is made at all, and that it's often regarded as an acceptable response to tell people that acknowledging their existence is too inconvenient. That's what's outrageous, and it should be made as universally socially unacceptable as any other societal taboo.

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

#153

Post by freeone3000 »

kriops wrote: post #131
austin-cheney wrote: post #109

The universal good, and unappreciated reality, about accessibility is that it benefits everyone. Wheelchair ramps aren’t limited to wheelchairs. I have above average hearing despite my advancing age and I choose to apply subtitles to digital movies about half the time because it provides me a better more enriching experience. Solving for color contrast limitations benefits everyone even when people have perfect visio…

In what world is cost not a good argument? In fact, assume cost is not a good argument – then why should it even be legal to compile programs that aren’t universally accessible? It’s always beneficial, and just a matter of cost after all. Or are you perhaps being completely one-sided and unreasonable?

“Cost is not a good argument [to not do it]” is the actual line taken with the ADA for public accommodations (which includes most private businesses). There is a reasonable accommodation rule as to how an accessibility function may be implemented, but not if, and the rule scales with the resources of the provider.

The result of which is, in the USA, a person in a wheelchair can enter nearly every business, use many public restrooms, and generally participate in life on their own.

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

#154

Post by cogn1zance »

I think A11Y has been approached incorrectly. A11Y should be an additional standardized data feed that A11Y devices have to consume. Right now the requirements while helpful to everyone, also restrict the full potential of CSS/JS/the browser. With highly complex UIs it becomes almost impossible to be compliant. Right now any A11Y device has unique control over applications. In theory it seems like one could introduce a new product to market, claim a website does not support it, and then file a suit.

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

#155

Post by JadeNB »

coolliquidcode wrote: post #110
huqedato wrote: post #9

I would never agree with this statement of the author: "You won’t stop until everybody is using your app." Why ? All the apps I ever build (or participate in their development) where targeted to the fit the most, without sacrificing the business requirements or other important/critical aspects of the app. Otherwise will end-up with an unusable product.

You should see how ADA requirements are practically impossible or completely break design. The high contrast of font to background requirement is so extreme that most major sites and even ADA related sites fail. Things like alt text is so time consuming it would be incredibly expensive to label all the images. Facebook has long resorted to using AI descriptions. Really it shouldn't be up to the developer it should be…

> Things like alt text is so time consuming it would be incredibly expensive to label all the images. Facebook has long resorted to using AI descriptions.

> Really it shouldn't be up to the developer it should be up to the disabled person to buy tools. Just like someone may need to buy a wheelchair to move around, they should have to buy a specialty browser that handles their limited visibility needs or brail tool interface.

How can buying a specialty browser solve a problem of a blind person needing alt text for images?

You, as a developer, can determine when AI-generated text is good enough for your images—sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. A specialty browser cannot, and should not, be trusted to make that decision, so it will need hints from the developer. And, once the developer offers those hints, any mainstream browser, not just specialty products, can make use of them.

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

#156

Post by shadowgovt »

freeone3000 wrote: post #153
kriops wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world is cost not a good argument? In fact, assume cost is not a good argument – then why should it even be legal to compile programs that aren’t universally accessible? It’s always beneficial, and just a matter of cost after all. Or are you perhaps being completely one-sided and unreasonable?

“Cost is not a good argument [to not do it]” is the actual line taken with the ADA for public accommodations (which includes most private businesses). There is a reasonable accommodation rule as to how an accessibility function may be implemented, but not if , and the rule scales with the resources of the provider. The result of which is, in the USA, a person in a wheelchair can enter nearly every business, use many…

Right, but the ADA is not held accountable to the cost. They get their federal budget chunk whether or not Main St, USA can afford to stay in business.

They may not be the best authority on the question of whether cost is a good enough argument.

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

#157

Post by ttepasse »

1letterunixname wrote: post #117
jakey_bakey wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you want about Apple, they hit the nail on the head when it comes to A11y APIs

Absolutely! On macOS, I use KeyCue to show every hotkey* in every app because it's able to inspect accessibility/automation data. Similarly, this is what permits scripting desktop apps from AppleScript. (There's a word or phrase meaning side-benefits from disability compliance, but it escapes me.) * Almost

Oh, that’s nice to know, now that the CheatSheet has been discontinued.

https://web.archive.org/web/20121114115948/http://mediaateli...

I thought CheatSheet was the original indie app which Apple copied for its iPad menus, but it seems KeyCue seems far older and such more original.

> Similarly, this is what permits scripting desktop apps from AppleScript.

AppleScript also has a second interaction in which the App gives access to an API to its “logical” object model. Instead of “Select item in list, then click on the delete button” the programming model is more “Tell the app to delete the e-mail”. On more complicated scripting tasks that makes a huge difference. But that depends on the developer on providing an AppleScript dictionary – which not everyone does. And Electron apps are of course black boxes, in scripting and more often than not in accessibility.

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

#158

Post by blowski »

threatofrain wrote: post #87
blowski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like "the semantic web", which has been a great idea just about to take for about 20 years now.

The problem is that the web isn't semantic enough; I mean, when considering the use case of reading documents, we don't even have a table of contents element.

The vast majority of web content is published on sites that want people to use the content in their extremely curated walled garden. Making it easy to mash up content and integrate it with other sites is the exact opposite of what's happening on Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, et al.

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

#159

Post by darajava »

I built my app in Flutter without thinking about a11y at all, and had a blind user complain about a feature I updated. She had been using the app for about 6 months and she said it’s one of the most accessible apps she’s used. Flutter pretty much takes care of it all for you and the highly custom feature I built didn’t need much tweaking at all to make it work for her again.

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

#160

Post by Aerroon »

nfw2 wrote: post #148
austin-cheney wrote: post #109

The universal good, and unappreciated reality, about accessibility is that it benefits everyone. Wheelchair ramps aren’t limited to wheelchairs. I have above average hearing despite my advancing age and I choose to apply subtitles to digital movies about half the time because it provides me a better more enriching experience. Solving for color contrast limitations benefits everyone even when people have perfect visio…

It is not universally true that accessibility efforts always benefit everyone. For example, implementing ARIA markup on HTML only benefits those using assistive technology. If developers don't know how to make web services accessible, it IS expensive because it will take time to train them. Developer time is often a company's biggest expense. Moreover, not every web product is simple to make accessible even by expert…

Another thing to consider is that some design choices seem to be in contention whether they're accessible or not. Eg dark mode makes it harder to read with astigmatism and creates visual hallucinations afterwards (it looks as though you're looking through blinds). Others swear that light mode hurts their eyes.
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