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The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

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Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#231

Post by petee »

beat wrote: post #140
craftyguy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would be a much better plan. See what I mean? No, because there are cases where having large fonts makes sense (e.g. for article titles, etc) while preserving the ability to display smaller fonts than that (e.g. for article content).

ctrl-shift-minus in your browser. Make the font as tiny as you like, if it bothers you.

Conversely, you could just ctrl-shift-plus and make the text as readable as you like, since it bothers you and stop justifying the rest of us having to jump through hoops.

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#232

Post by petee »

justsomedude43 wrote: post #62
seorphates wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can appreciate hn is mostly humor intolerant but these are all basically right on point. The web experience is now akin to walking the mall; loud, expensive, garbage.

Pretty much, I just said "haha" and I got 5 downvotes in 20min. :)

because just saying haha adds nothing to the conversation. its just wasted time and space; this ain't reddit.

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#233

Post by bromuro »

test1235 wrote: post #163
Pxtl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you handle something like filters on a product listing? Make every filter option its own link?

they're not links, as they don't link off to other pages - they'd be buttons, with event handlers attached.

Submit buttons in a standard HTML form will update history and document location. What’s the difference?

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#234

Post by makecheck »

perlgeek wrote: post #189

> You use ALT text by adding the alt attribute with a value of the text equivalent of your image, like so: > https://example.com/image.png” alt=“developer in an office working feverishly to hit a deadline on a software project” /> Is this actually a good idea? This sounds like a typical "hero" or "teaser" image, to capture the reader's attention or interest. I don't think the alt tag does that in a comparable way, fo…

I feel like screen-reader-capable text should always have two options, since so many things in life benefit from a detail option: “give me the tl;dr” with an option for “more” if I want it.

I know it’s hard enough to get consistent support for "alt" at all but an "alt-long" might be nice too so you can say things like alt="Picture of ocean landscape" alt-long="An evening shot of a beach in the Maldives, with a full moon, no clouds and still water.".

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#235

Post by drb91 »

perlgeek wrote: post #189

> You use ALT text by adding the alt attribute with a value of the text equivalent of your image, like so: > https://example.com/image.png” alt=“developer in an office working feverishly to hit a deadline on a software project” /> Is this actually a good idea? This sounds like a typical "hero" or "teaser" image, to capture the reader's attention or interest. I don't think the alt tag does that in a comparable way, fo…

The alt text you quoted still sets mood and setting. In terms of capturing reader interest, narrative is important. How would this hurt?

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#236

Post by bromuro »

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #95
aidenn0 wrote: post #43

I'm still looking for "just use links". So many frontends I see use fancy onclicks to emulate links (including updating window.location). However they are either not links or are void links. This breaks all sorts of useful things (copy link location, open in new tab &c.).

Remember flat html? Remember servers that would generate pages? Remember when CSS preprocessors didn't peg the CPU for 50ms? Maybe we should investigate this ancient tech of the old ones.

Yes we remember how limited was the web back then. I also miss those times, good memories. But to make money out of it we had to follow the latest trends in UX since they attracted more visitors than us. The first DHTML, the java applets, the arrive of flash, and then XHTMLHttpRequest used by google in their new born gmail. So now we are here with these new awesome technologies and we want to go back. But I’m not sure it will be fun.

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#237

Post by dredmorbius »

ChrisSD wrote: post #81
rayiner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's why that happens. Why on earth would you break one of the most foundational aspects of HTML that way?

Yes what will they break next? Scrolling?! It's almost as though web devs enjoy reimplementing the browser in javascript...

Horizontal scroll. Orbpageflipping.

Just don't.

PubMed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3968624/

(There's still a legacy fallback.)

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#238

Post by dredmorbius »

claydavisss wrote: post #58

in the 90s, unix developers built web frontends and they were built in this way - simple, with text. they had no skills in graphic design so they kept it simple. after 2000, graphic designers took over this work and evolved into "frontend" developers. although there were periodic wins like google maps that would have never been produced by the 90s greybeards...most of it has been an endless stream of garbage. but the…

Every so often I come across a simple, elegant site. Since I bitch about the others, some kudos:

Matt Gemmell, from aa few years back:

https://mattgemmell.com/staying-creative/

Matthew Graybosch

https://www.matthewgraybosch.com/starbreaker/

Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5 is a classic.

http://diveinto.html5doctor.com

Outline is a lifesaver: https://outline.com

(Especially for browsers/platforms w/o Reader Mode.)

I've also got an entry in the motherlovin' website contest.

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#239

Post by philwelch »

vkou wrote: post #219
vanderZwan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such an extremely simple litmus test: if it breaks the back button of the browser, it's the wrong design. The closest thing to an exception being cases where one needs to be logged in to see a page, or when links are consciously invalidated for some other reason. And even then the website/webapp should still just signal this to the user without a bazillion redirects.

> It's such an extremely simple litmus test: if it breaks the back button of the browser, it's the wrong design. What if state should be destroyed when you press the back button? What if I open an image in a photo app, click a button to delete it, and go to a 'deletion successful' page. Should clicking the back button return me to a page containing the image? A page containing 'this image has been deleted'? The websi…

Not being able to click "back" out of a POST isn't broken, in my opinion.

Basically, if the "back" button behaves differently than it would have behaved in a functionally similar web app in 1998, it's broken. Web apps in 1998 didn't let you click "back" out of a POST.

Re: The easiest way to keep your web apps accessible: Just use text

#240

Post by joegahona »

krn wrote: post #155
gnicholas wrote: post #84

Ironically, this article was posted on Medium, whose apps are notoriously inaccessible. Despite being a reading-focused app, it does not let you change the text size or spacing in any way. And on iOS, it also ignores the user's systemwide dynamic text setting.

Why does Medium need an app in the first place? Is a web browser not a good enough app for reading content on the internet?

To send push notifications and make it on people's phone screens, is my guess.
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