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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

#221

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

freedomben wrote: post #206
darajava wrote: post #159

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.

I've heard this previously as well. Pretty compelling argument for using Flutter. If only I didn't dislike Dart so much...

What issues have you had with dart last you tried it? What was the last version you tried? Dart has improved greatly in the last few years. It's one of the better OOP GCed languages these days in my opinion.

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

#222

Post by freedomben »

godelski wrote: post #209
mrguyorama wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine from college has a form of dwarfism that gives him extremely limited walking ability. I have spent many hours pushing his wheelchair around college and now around towns. Newfound dislike of cobblestone streets lol. During one busy winter, he had to drive his mobility scooter to class in the early morning after a huge storm. The "ramp" to get from the sidewalk to the street to go where he needed to go…

> Newfound dislike of cobblestone streets God... yes > I often wonder if Americans are especially selfish. I can only speak to America and visiting another popular Asian country. I don't think it is uniquely American. It seems more related to people struggling and thus how much they're in their own world. I think about this a lot because it makes it a solvable thing. But maybe I'm just hopeful. I mean either way we l…

> It seems more related to people struggling and thus how much they're in their own world.

Yes, this is very well said and has been my experience as well. It's also been my experience that generally speaking we (the world and the US) are getting better and better at a11y. My cousin was in a wheel chair for decades before he passed away, and there were a lot of places we just flat could not go. It was a nightmare, but the worst enemy was ignorance, not selfishness.

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

#223

Post by freedomben »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #29
threatofrain wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think eventually we're heading to website as data with clients remixing the data in a way you don't expect; i.e., the final output will be a mishmash of sources.

The opposite of that actually. Nobody is going to bother with websites if it's just data that gets slurped up by AI and fed back to people, it's a lot of work for no payout. People who make websites are going to make them interactive multimedia experiences that pull you away from the chatbot to feel something. The New York Times the information dump has no future, the New York Times the interactive multimedia social…

I can't speak to GP, but AI is exactly what I had in mind when I read their comment. With AI transforming website content, the sites themselves just become data sources.

You could be right though, especially with more and more sites blocking robots. Legitimate companies might just have to shrug and say, "this site prohibits me from reading it. You'll have to go there instead) though that seems like a legal problem to me rather than a technical one.

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

#224

Post by ryandrake »

bitwize wrote: post #220
ryandrake wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies do all sorts of (IMO insane) things to their apps that reduce their reach. Ignoring accessibility is just one of them. I remember when I was in the app-writing business, and our devs would be constantly trying to bump up the minimum OS version supported. “See here, it says that only 10% of customer devices are on OS version 10.1 and below. We must bump our minimum version to 10.2 because us developers are t…

See also: gating table-stakes features behind "download our app". E.g., messaging on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Exactly. “Hello, potentially revenue-generating customer. Now go away!” Insanity.

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

#225

Post by m463 »

jnovek wrote: post #54
SamBorick wrote: post #46

It's amazing how many people in this thread are seriously suggesting that these a11y features are not important. Do HN readers not understand that someday they will grow old, and their eyesight will fail, and they will find themselves increasing the font size on their devices?

This is what gets me -- almost everyone who reaches old age will eventually be disabled. Some folks just get there faster.

> Some folks just get there faster.

From my observation, most folks get there temporarily or faster in their own specific way.

I have friends who lost their hearing early for a variety of reasons.

There are lots of ways to have imperfect eyesight, or lose it temporarily. You can lose your glasses or not be able to wear contact lenses for a while.

Lots of folks with laser surgery eventually regress. Also the surgery itself has visual side-effects.

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

#226

Post by freedomben »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #221
freedomben wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this previously as well. Pretty compelling argument for using Flutter. If only I didn't dislike Dart so much...

What issues have you had with dart last you tried it? What was the last version you tried? Dart has improved greatly in the last few years. It's one of the better OOP GCed languages these days in my opinion.

My issues with Dart are pretty shallow honestly, mainly coming down to look and feel[1] and personal preference. I have no remaining technical qualms with Dart, just that I don't like it's flavor of ice cream (metaphorically speaking of course). It reminds me a lot of Java and feels like it was created to be more like what Javascript "should" have been had it been designed to be a scripting version of Java from the start. Of course this makes a ton of sense given it was designed at Google from a lot of Java devs.

[1]: In the past I did have some criticisms around performance and non-native widgets, but those have been worked out

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

#227

Post by m463 »

sircastor wrote: post #62
SamBorick wrote: post #46

It's amazing how many people in this thread are seriously suggesting that these a11y features are not important. Do HN readers not understand that someday they will grow old, and their eyesight will fail, and they will find themselves increasing the font size on their devices?

Disability accommodations tend to also strongly benefit everyone else. I know this isn't a code thing, but the most useful one I can think of is curb cuts. All of this affects all of us.

I personally like closed captions and subtitles

(Though I don't understand the tech and how converting media frequently loses this)

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

#228

Post by bitwize »

maxloh wrote: post #14
mikece wrote: post #5

What is the real liability for a scenario like this? Is there any grace period when a new app or startup becomes far more successful far sooner than expected? I imagine A11Y isn't a massive concern when it's not certain an idea will even work; outside of California I can't imagine being legally skewered if, once you attain unexpected success, you devote A11Y resources to address this issue.

Maybe required by EU law? Not a friend of accessibility though. It requires so much work to satisfy a small base of users.

In the long run, everybody is disabled. My eyesight is way worse than it used to be, as an example, and it's beginning to affect my ability to computer. Absent some miracle treatment (which is bound to cost an arm and a leg and NOT be covered by insurance anyway), it's not going to get any better.

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

#229

Post by neomantra »

madeofpalk wrote: post #187
neomantra wrote: post #143

Just today, I was making a product landing page and wanted it to be accessible. Since we have Instagram, YouTube, and GitHub, I wanted to get the icons from those sources. I looked at how to ensure that with SVG and found this SO [1]. While YouTube does not supply SVGs, the SVGs from Instagram [2] and GitHub [3] did not include any a11y metadata. I was really surprised by this, given the massive user bases thereof, b…

You don't really need to do that. The point of putting alt text on images is to users who use screen readers can still understand your website. Tabbing through in a screen reader hearing detailed descriptions of each social logo is probably a poor user experience. Probably just "Github logo" or even "Github" would do just as well. If the image/logo is purely presentational (that is - if you remove the image do you re…

Thanks for that feedback, I appreciate it. The road to bad UX is paved with good intentions.

Is the issue specifically the aria-label being too verbose? Like it's OK for the other metadata or even that's overkill?

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

#230

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

freedomben wrote: post #226
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What issues have you had with dart last you tried it? What was the last version you tried? Dart has improved greatly in the last few years. It's one of the better OOP GCed languages these days in my opinion.

My issues with Dart are pretty shallow honestly, mainly coming down to look and feel[1] and personal preference. I have no remaining technical qualms with Dart, just that I don't like it's flavor of ice cream (metaphorically speaking of course). It reminds me a lot of Java and feels like it was created to be more like what Javascript "should" have been had it been designed to be a scripting version of Java from the s…

Interesting view. What makes it feel like java in your opinion? I think I see your point about dart being what JS should have been but I would add that it is also like what Java should have been. And really the only reason to compare it to Java is because it is the language that spawned most other comparable languages (C#, Swift, Dart, Kotlin, JS (kind of)). But syntactically Dart is nothing like java:

- no `new`

- no single class files only restriction

- named parameters

- no java.util.arraylist nonsense.

semantically it is also very different (unlike eg. Kotlin)

- first class support for passing functions as parameters (this is the worst issue with Java by far and can't be understated)

- sound type system (String cannot be null)

- async/await

- no bytecode

lots of other QOL features as well. If you're really thinking of trying out Flutter don't let Dart stop you from doing so. You may even find you like it!

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