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How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

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Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#71

Post by toast0 »

bradley13 wrote: post #65

I'm a teacher and I've had blind students, so I am aware of the barriers. But: do an honest evaluation of the costs of full, correct accessibility vs. the number of people who benefit. A cold-blooded calculation for a company putting out a project. It honestly is not worth it. Huge costs, and you sell...maybe an additional license or two. So no one does it.

The carrot is clearly not enough for accessibility. That's why the ADA provides the stick.

There's a large benefit for society when society is more accommodating. It's easier to notice the accommodations for limited mobility; but if you have a new limit to your mobility, you'll notice everywhere they aren't. Accommodations for limited vision are often less noticable if you don't have experience with limited vision, but many of them are not very expensive if done at the right time in the project.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#72

Post by analog31 »

bebe9494i4 wrote: post #8

It is revealing how people with disabilities are treated, just to walk on sidewalk as a deaf person. Most cyclicts assume they have a priority on sidewalks, and will ring bell to enforce it. If you do not jump out of their way in 2 seconds, you get rammed. Cyclists know I can not hear them (I am wearing big noise cancelling headphones). Yet they still insist on their imaginary priority on sidewalks. I was forced to r…

I'm a cyclist, and I sympathize with you. Also, my mom is stone deaf, and I've observed her experiences on paths that are shared with cyclists.

My town is one of the few places where cyclists are allowed on the sidewalks, but I don't do it except for very good reasons such as along dangerous roads. Those places also tend to have no pedestrians. And I give wide berth to people on foot, typically slowing down to walking pace or even getting off my bike and walking.

Also, the bell is for "announcing" not "enforcing." It's gentler than startling someone as you pass them, or making their dog freak out. And it doesn't preclude slowing down.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#73

Post by analog31 »

shermantanktop wrote: post #53
estebank wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't individual responsibility our way out of systemic problems. Cyclists on sidewalks generally signals terrible bike infrastructure. There are people on bikes that ride like an asshole. There are people on cars that drive like an asshole. Both cause (different levels of) risk for pedestrians. There's only so much we can do about assholes, social ostracism works only so far and social change is much harder to ac…

Thanks for stopping. In my experience as a pedestrian, bikes are worse than cars. Less predictable, less observant of laws, and more willing to take risks that depend on others jumping out of their way. On the plus side, they don’t weigh 3000lbs.

The statistics still point towards being more concerned about cars.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#74

Post by estebank »

bebe9494i4 wrote: post #62
estebank wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't individual responsibility our way out of systemic problems. Cyclists on sidewalks generally signals terrible bike infrastructure. There are people on bikes that ride like an asshole. There are people on cars that drive like an asshole. Both cause (different levels of) risk for pedestrians. There's only so much we can do about assholes, social ostracism works only so far and social change is much harder to ac…

[flagged]

You sure come across as calm and collected, looking for a good faith discussion...

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#76

Post by jdboyd »

captainbland wrote: post #46
singpolyma3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cycling on sidewalks is illegal here in Canada. Surprised it's being allowed elsewhere

Generally it's more "overlooked" than allowed. In the UK for instance cycling on pavements (sidewalks) is unlawful but the guidance is to only enforce this if the cyclist is not giving consideration to pedestrians. Realistically though I think it leads to the same state of play as everywhere else where pedestrians don't much fancy being hit by a faster moving and taller (if not larger) object so dodge out of the way…

In my part of small city east coast USA it is allowed except in the downtown business district (where it is syill mostly ignored.

On the one hand, not everyone wants to be required to have their 4yo ride on the road with no bike lane, but on the other hand, I hate having preteens on extra.heavy looking bikes below out of the way at me why they drive at nearly car speeds on the sidewalk.

Of course we wouldn't really have to ban bikes on sidewalks to deal with those preteens as preteens aren't allowed on electric bikes or electric scooters anyway in this state. And electric scooters aren't allowed on the sidewalk or road here.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#77

Post by mslate »

bebe9494i4 wrote: post #8

It is revealing how people with disabilities are treated, just to walk on sidewalk as a deaf person. Most cyclicts assume they have a priority on sidewalks, and will ring bell to enforce it. If you do not jump out of their way in 2 seconds, you get rammed. Cyclists know I can not hear them (I am wearing big noise cancelling headphones). Yet they still insist on their imaginary priority on sidewalks. I was forced to r…

What exactly does this have to do with the article?

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#78

Post by shermantanktop »

analog31 wrote: post #73
shermantanktop wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for stopping. In my experience as a pedestrian, bikes are worse than cars. Less predictable, less observant of laws, and more willing to take risks that depend on others jumping out of their way. On the plus side, they don’t weigh 3000lbs.

The statistics still point towards being more concerned about cars.

Statistics don’t lie, but my experience doesn’t lie either. 90% of the assholes I encounter on the road are on bicycles.

FWIW, I live in Seattle, a famously bike-friendly city. Stop signs, red lights, pedestrians and even one-way street signs don’t seem to exist in the visual field of many cyclists here.

Obviously there are reasonable law-abiding bicyclists out there. Certainly all the cyclists online say they obey all the laws. But apparently I’m seeing an entirely different group of people in the real world, zooming around lawlessly.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#79

Post by RobMurray »

zersiax wrote: post #47
Tepix wrote: post #5

While the content was interesting, the AI-slop-stench was repelling. Talking about AI (sorry!), perhaps an AI assisted screen reader could remove repetitive elements ( it appends "(read only)" to every. single. field. ) in a smart fashion? Does this already exist? We're seeing AI being used to improve a11y in quite a few places: (Live) transcripts for video conferences, image to text (VQA, visual question answering)…

No. There are certainly AI-generated accessibility solutions for single, existing applications, games and websites but no outright AI-powered screen reader. I'd think the token cost alone would make such a project prohibitively expensive, although one-off AI features are starting to sneak into JAWS and NVDA as we spaek, so who knows.

latency would be the killer. a very tiny delay between pressing a key and hearing a response can make a screen reader feel unresponsive.

Re: How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

#80

Post by Havoc »

Recently went to a restaurant that is fully blacked out and has blind waiters. Pretty fascinating experience.

The inability to identify food when you take away visual clues was much much worse than expected. Even just beef vs chicken which I would have laughed at if you suggested that to me beforehand. But nope…one slightly exotic sauce on chicken and everyone was confused.

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