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

https://jacobbartlett.substack.com/p/oh-sht-my-app-is-successful-and-i

by jakey_bakey • 2 years ago

277 285 2 years ago

jacobbartlett.substack.com

Why have we settled upon annotating accessibility options onto a visual-first, generally high-precision/high-touch-density medium? Wouldn't it be better to just have a "low vision" version of the app, a "low touch accuracy" version of the app, etc?

Then you could provide the accessibility-minded users with something customized to their needs, instead of trying to shoehorn accessibility onto a layout that might have no commonality between what "normal" users want and what accessibility-required users want.

threatofrain4• 2 years ago

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.

blowski2• 2 years ago

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

CuriouslyC2• 2 years ago

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 game and event hub with emotionally stirring stories, pictures and video can survive.

jmilloy• 2 years ago

Why do you think that? Everything I see suggests the opposite.

ijwann• 2 years ago

Good luck getting your organization to support building two apps. And even if you succeed once, good luck getting your organization to ship features twice every single time they want to build something.

What will end up happening is you have your normal app which isn't accessible, and a second app with a fraction of your features that is likely often broken because it's hard to prioritize.

threatofrain4• 2 years ago

You have one backend and two frontends, one of which is simplified and all-about-the-data. I daresay there's the possibility that it's easier to create two websites than it is to make one website do two things.

kolanos• 2 years ago

iOS and Android largely do this for you as long as you use the platform's accessibility features.

AlienRobot2• 2 years ago

People said it would take twice as long to make two versions of the same frontend, so they spent a hundred times as long making crossplatform, responsive, accessible GUIs that often feel terrible to use no matter who the user is.

toast0• 2 years ago

Separate but equal isn't equal, and in the US, the ADA requires reasonable accommodation. It's not reasonable to require a second, separate app to cater to people with low vision/low dexterity, and chances are it's not going to have equal functionality (how many separate apps have equal functionality). It's better to require platforms to make accommodation a core feature (which they have largely done!) and require developers to use the accommodations.

The ADA has a private right of action which means that there's distributed effort to find out what's a reasonable accommodation and also to drag businesses into compliance. There's plusses and minuses with this approach, of course.

acdha5• 2 years ago

It's not reasonable to require a second, separate app to cater to people with low vision/low dexterity, and chances are it's not going to have equal functionality

Your first half of that sentence is debatable in absolute terms but in practice almost always right due to the second half. It can be reasonable to have an alternative version of something — for example, an audio or braille version of a printed document, or a ramp alternative to stairs – but the really hard part is actually keeping them in parity. If something is seen as a compliance obligation, I’d be shocked if that actually happened versus resources being allocated mostly to the extent that they’re cheaper than legal fees.

PaulStatezny• 2 years ago

Wouldn't it be better to just have a "low vision" version of the app, a "low touch accuracy" version of the app, etc?

I find your comment interesting because it speaks to users who can see, just not well. When I think of web accessibility, I (mostly) think of users who are entirely blind. While it turns out:

~80% of screen reader users are blind. The other ~20% may be partially vision impaired, or sometimes not visually impaired at all (but use it due to things like dyslexia). [1]

~2.4% of Americans are visually impaired and use (or could benefit from) a screen reader. [2]

A "low vision" / "low touch accuracy" version of an app would likely be serving less than 0.5% (20% of 2.4%, see above) of your userbase. (As opposed to simply supporting screen readers in the "regular" version of the app.) Doesn't seem like a priority to optimize for 0.5% of your userbase when you're just trying to vet an unproven idea.

[1] https://www.tempertemper.net/blog/not-all-screen-reader-user...

[2] https://nfb.org/resources/blindness-statistics

IncreasePosts2• 2 years ago

I was just giving examples of different types of accessibility needs, it wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list. You can imagine "no vision" as a type of "low vision", where vision = 0.0 if you'd like

madeofpalk6• 2 years ago

Do you wear glasses? HoW many people do you know need corrective lenses?

pxc3• 2 years ago

Those survey results probably don't mean what you think they mean. Among blind and visually impaired people, the term 'blind' can include basically anyone who is legally blind— it does not refer exclusively to the totally blind.

My mom has been legally blind for almost two decades now, IIRC. It's only within the past year or two that her computer and phone usage has begun to switch to primarily screen reader-based rather than primarily magnification-based. From then and continuing on to this day, she chooses between the terms 'low vision' and 'blind' (and various others) mainly according to what she thinks the person she's talking to will most easily understand. (Although over the course of time she has gradually shifted toward favoring the word 'blind', both as she becomes more connected to the local blind community and as her vision continues to degrade).

One thing to keep in mind is that going from normal/visual phone usage to a screen reader is like learning to walk all over again (and discovering that some paths are not for you anymore). It's starting over from zero, and it sucks. Going from typical visual usage to jacking up your font sizes is basically free, and using some kind of magnification a fairly natural next step. For people with progressive vision loss, there may be decades where one is 'blind', but it's still not efficient or opportune to drop everything and switch to relying exclusively on a screen reader.

DonHopkins• 2 years ago

Pie menus support "low touch accuracy" out of the box in a way that benefits everyone, and helps train novice users to become experts by "rehearsal".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39227843

Fitts' Law intuitively and mathematically explains why pie menus are faster and have lower error rates than linear menus. Fitts's Law says in effect: the bigger and closer a target is, the faster and more reliably you can hit it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

Fitts's law (often cited as Fitts' law) is a predictive model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction and ergonomics. The law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target. Fitts's law is used to model the act of pointing, either by physically touching an object with a hand or finger, or virtually, by pointing to an object on a computer monitor using a pointing device. It was initially developed by Paul Fitts.

Pie menus both minimize the target distance, while also maximizing the target size. And the physical directional gesture required to select an item does not demand your continuous visual attention and cognitively taxing hand-eye feedback loop. You don't need to look at the screen to select items from a pie menu, so you can reliably "mouse ahead" or gesture, which is impossible with linear menus.

Another advantage is that they support "rehearsal", by seamlessly training novice users to become experts.

Unlike keyboard shortcuts, the physical action of the novice and expert is the same, only experts can do it faster without looking at the screen.

Unlike traditional "invisible" gesture recognition systems like Palm Graffiti or StrokePlus.net, pie menus are "self revealing" in that the can pop up a menu that shows all the available options and their direction. It's quite difficult to learn which invisible gestures are available and what they all mean, but easy to discover them with pie menus.

Pie menus also support "browsing" and "reselection", which gesture recognition doesn't, allowing users to correct errors or even browse around highlighting every item to preview its effects.

Since pie menus can provide live continuous preview of the effects of the selected item in the application itself (which is especially nice when you use the distance as a parameter, for example a pie menu that lets you create eight objects, with a pull-out size parameter: the more you pull out, the bigger the object previewed at your cursor, which switches to different objects as you browse around the menu, then turns into a real object when you release the button), so you can see the effect and release the button when it's perfect, or go back to the center to cancel. Often the only feedback you need is the live preview of the pie menu selection, and popping up a menu would be a distraction.

Once you learn the directions, you can quickly select items by stroking in the desired direction without even looking at the menu, so pie menus can perform the selection without popping up the menu. There's no need to pop up the "self revealing" menu until you stop dragging the mouse, or you can pop it up instantly by "clicking up" the menu. So a novice can get directions instantly, while an expert can fly ahead without waiting for directions, then pause for directions or confirmation that you have the right selection at any time.

There's a smooth escalator moving you up the learning curve every time you use a pie menu, training your muscle memory through rehearsal.

That is how pie menus "Lead, follow, or get out of the way".

We performed an empirical study in 1988 that measured eight-item pie menus to be 15% faster than linear menus, with less frequent errors.

An Empirical Comparison of Pie vs. Linear Menus (Jack Callahan, Don Hopkins, Mark Weiser, and Ben Shneiderman, Proc. ACM CHI’88):

https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie...

Pie menus gain over traditional linear menus by reducing target seek time, lowering error rates by fixing the distance factor and increasing the target size in Fitts’s Law, minimizing the drift distance after target selection, and are, in general, subjectively equivalent to the linear style.

[...]

Pilot study results: A pilot study of 16 subjects showed that users were approximately 15% faster with the pie menus and that errors were less frequent with pie menus. Statistically significant differences were found for item seek time but not task type. Subjects were split on their subjective preference of pie and linear menus. Some commented that they were able to visually isolate an item easier with linear menus and that it was hard to control the selection in pie menus because of the sensitivity of the pie menu selection mechanism. These subjects tended to be the most mouse naive of all whereas those who had heard of or seen a mouse/cursor controlled system but had not used one extensively tended to prefer pie menus. The most mouse naive users, while finding linear menus easier, tended to be better at pie menus and commented that with practice, they would probably be superior and in fact prefer the pie menus because of their speed and minimization of hand movement with the mouse. Not surprisingly, therefore, most of those preferring linear menus did not have a strong preference on the scaled subjective questionnaire.

More about Fitts's Law and pie menu in this thread from Sept 27, 2022 on: Cairo: Alternative Windows Desktop:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32992673

More info:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39228342

mcguire2• 2 years ago

Or, you could just not have the "low-*" versions and tell anyone who needed or wanted them, "Tough."

I wouldn't advise it, though.

dmazzoni4• 2 years ago

Assistive technology keeps growing and improving, though.

These days most operating systems already come with a voice control feature, designed for people with a motor impairment to use their device entirely by voice.

When you add alt text to an image button, you're not just enabling a blind user to hear a description, you're also enabling someone with carpal tunnel to speak the name of that button to activate it.

Most other accessibility APIs and preferences have multiple use cases like that, too.

That's why accessibility is designed the way it is: you're not modifying your app to work with specific disabilities, you're adding missing semantics and respecting user accessibility preferences, and assistive technology adapts things to work with different users.

AlienRobot2• 2 years ago

I thought this would be a real story, not a hypothetical...

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

Many such cases exist; I’ve been the champion before

mikece• 2 years ago

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.

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

It’s generally less of a legal liability and more of a reputation thing; as you grow you will get more and more users telling you off. See Wordle for an easy example.

Plus, its not that hard to do correctly, so the “we’re a startup on a critical burn rate” stops working as an excuse rather early

diggan• 2 years ago

Plus, its not that hard to do correctly, so the “we’re a startup on a critical burn rate” stops working as an excuse rather early

It's not a question of it being too hard or easy, but as always, a question of priorities.

Say you can either build feature A which is expected to open up the product to be used by 1% more users, as people been asking for that feature. Or you can build feature B, which enables motionsick people to use your app without getting sick from your wasteful animations. This will help 0.001% of your current users, when you have 10,000 users in total lets say.

Not saying it's right or wrong, but I understand why people (managers/owners) make the choice to do feature A instead of feature B, especially in a startup-context where it might be the (imaginary or not) choice between surviving or not.

I'm personally in the camp of thinking about accessibility as part of all the work done, but it's not exactly the mainstream workflow.

linkjuice4all2• 2 years ago

While it's generally a good idea to make your app/site accessible to all users and user agents - the trouble usually comes when you're big enough to get sued.

In my previous life at an ad agency we had a number of clients getting pursued by accessibility lawyers and firms. These were typically nothing more than shakedowns for some insignificant settlement (<$10k) - but it was an open-and-shut case if you wanted to take it to court so it was just easier to settle and spend a couple of sprints on WCAG best practices.

IANAL and my agency didn't do the actual implementation so it was typically up to the client to sort out - but having a lawyer on hand should be one of the first things you take care of once you start making or accepting large amounts of money.

maxloh• 2 years ago

Maybe required by EU law?

Not a friend of accessibility though. It requires so much work to satisfy a small base of users.

eropple• 2 years ago

A small base of users at any given time. Almost everyone needs "accessibility" eventually. You will, too, if you're lucky enough to live that long.

morder• 2 years ago

Until you're disabled.

nailer3• 2 years ago

You’re being downvoted but this is true - most accessibility work seems to be generated by the accessibility industry, and is focused on short term fixes (modifying every website) rather than long-term solutions (fixing web browsers for disabled people).

dmazzoni4• 2 years ago

Now you understand why laws like this need to be passed. Because otherwise assholes like you wouldn't do it.

bitwize2• 2 years ago

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.

PaulHoule2• 2 years ago

I work for an information service that sells subscriptions to academic and other users.

We don't have a legal mandate per se to be accessible but many of our subscribers do have a mandate that services they buy have to be accessible. Many of our customers insist on it because they have a legal mandate to be accessible. The university that we are a part of got sued because it made web sites that were not accessible

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/10/fifty-college...

and in principle any school could get in trouble for buying products and services that aren't accessible. So it is part of the contracts we sign now, we do accessibility audits regularly to stay ahead of issues, sometimes we have have customers who do their own audits. Thus a11y is a major priority here so I have learned all about ARIA (our app is a great fit) not to mention the real formulas for color spaces, contrast ratios and how to use a screen reader.

jonshariat• 2 years ago

I follow this as part of my role and the number of lawsuits has been increasing steadily over the years. Last year was 4,600 (for websites/apps) in the US. So might not feel a lot but of course the bigger your app is the bigger the target.

ReleaseCandidat• 2 years ago

What is the real liability for a scenario like this?

In the EU:

    As of 28 June 2025, companies must ensure that the newly marketed products and services covered by the Act are accessible. Member States may decide to make some exceptions. For instance, they can allow more time for the application of the new rules to service providers using self-service terminals. Microenterprises (i.e., a small business with fewer than 10 employees) which provide services also are exempted from the obligations of the Act. Nevertheless, all microenterprises are encouraged to make their products and services accessible to persons with disabilities.

https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1202&intPageId=55...

awkward• 2 years ago

You're liable under the ADA everywhere in the US. Florida and New York are the big federal courts where people bring these cases. If it's found that you have created a barrier to accessing services, you can be sued.

The US doesn't really have any regulatory apparatus for disability access - ADA liability is how it gets handled. The legal test is murky, the amount you're liable for is murky, and thats generally considered ok, because it will make you fix your shit (legal term).

sroussey• 2 years ago

There are lawyers in CA that blanket courts with these things for physical places. And others doing the same for online.

https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2023/05/15/ventura-c...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gusalexiou/2023/06/30/website-a...

theLiminator• 2 years ago

Does it apply to someone just releasing an open source app under an app store for free?

jocoda• 2 years ago

I'm curious about this too.

'big' open source projects like blender,etc - what are their responsibilities? A quick look at the site doesn't find much except that it's a work in progress.

What is the responsibility of a single developer with a 'scratch an itch' project on github?

Can I as a developer release something for personal use when it's good enough for my own purposes, but miles away from being accessible?

kypro• 2 years ago

I've worked for a couple of large corporations who were sued for accessibility issues.

This was about 5-6 years ago though and I was told back then that there was a number of people who are deliberately scouring the internet for websites with accessibility issues so they can sue them for not complying with US accessibility laws. These lawsuits I believe can be fairly costly for large organisations – I know I was given numbers in the millions, but I was on the technical team so I can't say for sure whether that number is accurate.

In one of the cases I was involved with we were given a period of time to take remedial action to make our site accessible otherwise we could face additional fines. I'd assume if you have a reasonable excuse that the penalties and remediation period would be more lenient.

I'll also add I'm from the UK, but our websites served US customers and our lawsuits came from the US. I believe the UK has similar accessibility laws, but I guess we don't have the same culture of suing businesses.

bradley13• 2 years ago

This. The problem isn't accessibility or the ADA. The problem is the US tort system and the way it is abused.

If your font is slightly too small or an alt-text is missing, or whatever? A lawsuit should have zero chance of success, which would then eliminate the blackmail game of "settle or we sue".

strictnein• 2 years ago

Not a lawyer, but helped addressed these concerns on the dev side at a previous large company.

It's going to vary a lot, but one metric that's used by lawyers in finding companies to sue is whether it impedes another protected action. For example, hiring employees has lots of rules and protections, therefore the website where people can look at and apply for your jobs needs to be accessible, especially if there is no other way to apply.

dmazzoni4• 2 years ago

You should invest as much into accessibility as you do into scaling.

Meaning: you should think about it early on, and design for the need, but not over invest in it too early.

If you're at the the stage where you don't know if your idea will work, you shouldn't be polishing accessibility, just like you shouldn't be denormalizing your database schema to increase performance.

However, you should be thinking about accessibility, just like you should be thinking about how your database queries will scale if you get increased load.

So for example: if you're making a database of images, why not add a field for alt text from the start and start populating it now? If your app needs drag and drop, why not start sketching out an alternative flow for people who can't drag and drop now?

extra885• 2 years ago

"Premature optimization" is definitely a thing in scaling but not so much in accessibility. I suppose having a native feature to let users choose from a wide array of fonts and color schemes (vs. honoring OS settings for those) before you have users could be accessibility-related premature optimization.

Accessibility is more often compared to security; if you don't think about how to securely transfer or store data early on, it's going to be much harder later on (support for SSO before you have users might be premature optimization unless your product is especially geared toward enterprises).

huqedato2• 2 years ago

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.

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

That’s fair; I might have been a little gung-ho with this introductory flavour text

huqedato2• 2 years ago

Moreover, the target "audience" of an app is always specified before the design phase, in the Business Requirements Document and such and it's a defining element for the development. I've read/wrote hundreds of such documents in my career, yet I've never seen one that sets its target audience as 'everybody'.

zymhan3• 2 years ago

I think your post has personality, as it is written.

Just my unsolicited, non-expert advice: don't make your writing more generic just to appeal to a wider audience.

curtisblaine3• 2 years ago

I guess if you're growing for the sake of growth you would do exactly that: not stop until everybody is using your app, because # of users (or rather, delta-# of users) is the most important metric. I agree it's a terrible metric, but isn't it the only VC-money-fuelled metric that counts in many cases (at least nowadays?)

xyst• 2 years ago

It’s part of founders pitch repertoire to dumb VCs. Sadly it’s made its way into mainstream content

coolliquidcode8• 2 years ago

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 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.

pcl• 2 years ago

“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.”

No, that’s the wrong analogy. The ADA is there to ensure that people with wheelchairs can find a barrier-free entrance to a building, and a curb cut at an intersection.

It should be on us, the developers, to ensure our apps work with the tools of the trade to enable people with limitations. So, our apps should be usable by screen readers. The screen reader is the analogue to the wheelchair here.

This is one of the great things about HTML. Even ignorant / lazy / time-constrained developers are likely to output something that sorta works, just since they’re using divs and imgs and whatnot.

And the bar is so low! Adding accessibility labels takes not much effort at all. And, as an added bonus, accessible apps are easier to test, since testing frameworks like Playwright can hook into accessibility info directly to validate assertions.

JadeNB3• 2 years ago

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.

mwcampbell• 2 years ago

The high contrast of font to background requirement is so extreme that most major sites and even ADA related sites fail.

Why don't they just use high contrast? Why is readability so unfashionable?

dataflow• 2 years ago

The high contrast of font to background requirement is so extreme that most major sites and even ADA related sites fail.

What's so wrong with black text on a white background that it's considered extreme?

extra885• 2 years ago

high contrast of font to background requirement is so extreme

Extreme? The WCAG standard for text most organizations use (Level AA) is 4.5:1 with 1:1 being black-on-black and 21:1 being black-on-white (or vice versa). The higher standard (Level AAA) is only 7:1. Most people wouldn't want to read your content if everything was 7:1 or lower.

Facebook has long resorted to using AI descriptions

Facebook didn't upload those images, their users did, Facebook isn't responsible for them having good text alternatives.

Just like someone may need to buy a wheelchair to move around

To go along with your poor analogy, blind people have "wheelchair" equivalents, called screen readers. They're useless if don't build "ramps" that meet established building standards, websites and apps that follow established standards.

madeofpalk6• 2 years ago

I don't know - I'm always amused at how companies will try all sorts of growth hacks to eke out an extra 1% of DAU or whatever, but won't prioritise building products for human beings.

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

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 tired of supporting this old shit and legacy code paths!”

This seems to me to be a lot like a salesman simply hanging up on 1 out of 10 of their potential customers. Makes no sense to me, but the version bumpers seem to be winning. The number of apps that no longer support my iPhone 7 is growing and growing…

zymhan3• 2 years ago

I think you're being too harsh, it's simply a form of rhetoric.

Surely you could've shared your take on the actual substance of the post?

alsetmusic• 2 years ago

It’s clearly a cheeky comment to give a sense of levity to the presentation.

ramshanker• 2 years ago

>>>> We’re going to look at a dead simple, cat-themed, companion app I created especially for this article. <<<<<

Reading that sent me a chill. So now people are creating new app for each article! Reading further, I understand why it had to be done for this article, but just imagine. Now a days even one-off events have dedicated APP for visitors management. What next, one for each booth of the event.

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

I’ve done it before where I have a big sample project for multiple articles, but tbh it’s a lot easier for me as well to keep everything independent

bbertucc• 2 years ago

everyone should be taking this stuff seriously. EU's accessibility act is set to be implemented in 2025 and the US congress also has a bill in the works that mandates greater accessibility across all governments.

jtriangle3• 2 years ago

1 in 6 people think your app is broken
16% of people have some kind of accessibility requirement

16% is 4 in 25 people, also no guarantee you'll be able to accommodate their specific accessibility requirement, depending on the app, and depending on the requirement.

That's not to say the app shouldn't be accessible, more that, you should think about when you spend the money to implement things like this, and how that money may best be spent to accommodate the highest number of people. Figure out who those people are, then figure out what your revenue growth would be if you captured those people, then compare those numbers to how much you'll have to spend to accommodate their needs. That's no different than any feature upgrade really.

Where you'll likely arrive at is the same place many apps have, unfortunately, arrived at, which is to probably just get text scaling quasi working and leave it at that because anything more is throwing cash into a black hole.

jnovek3• 2 years ago

As a person who uses accessibility features on his devices, this attitude is why we depend on regulation to ensure that we (disabled people) can do stuff. No company implements accessibility features out of the kindness of their heart.

nsxwolf2• 2 years ago

If I'm putting out a free app as a single developer, I don't have the time or money to do everything. If it becomes popular, I can use metrics to improve the accessibility situation.

If government regulations are going to insist I have to put that investment in day 1, I'll just take up badminton or something.

jtriangle3• 2 years ago

I wouldn't say "no company", there do exist companies that are run by kind, thoughtful people. Never large companies granted, it seems the heart in something gets replaced by MBA grad nonsense past a certain size, but they very well do exist, and there's probably more of them than there are large companies that would just as soon put us all in a meat grinder if it helped their margins.

It's part of why I've really tried to stay employed with smallish businesses, because they're more human.

axus• 2 years ago

The theory is that the companies would do it for the +14% growth from users with disabilities, the reality is that they'll spend the effort on other things instead, and that disabled users would suffer through it because they needed to use the website.

shadowgovt2• 2 years ago

Has anyone cracked the nut of making accessible 3D modeling software?

I haven't found anything in that vein and I'm curious if anyone's working on it.

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

I hope that this article can do some small work in changing that perception!

My apologies for the math inaccuracy is in the mail.

jtriangle3• 2 years ago

I think that pointing out there are easy (read: cheap) ways of baking in accessibility is a valuable thing Jacob, and, there's certainly wisdom in baking some of that in as part of your development process. Nothing's worse than pushing something into alpha for QA and immediately having it tossed back to the dev team because they have to rework something obvious. Big morale hit all around.

I wasn't really trying for pedantry, but, if the check's in the mail, thanks for 0.666% of a coffee ;)

codegeek• 2 years ago

There is a middle ground. There are Free widgets that you can install [0] that can add some accessibility features on top of any existing website/app. Not perfect but takes care of a lot of low hanging fruits.

https://userway.org/get/

rondini2• 2 years ago

I strongly discourage anyone to use such tools. More often than not they make the user experience even worse for users with disabilities, and they paint a huge target on your back that litigious users will take advantage of. The majority of a11y lawsuits target companies that use these overlays[1].

[1] https://www.accessibility.works/blog/avoid-accessibility-ove...

rondini2• 2 years ago

1/6 is 4/24 or 16.6%, I don't see why we have to be so pedantic.

That aside, the work of prioritizing accommodations is already done. Just read through the WCAG criteria, start with level A, then AA. They already determined what the most critical issues are to accommodate everyone who uses your app. I find it extremely callous to frame people's ability to use your product in terms of the revenue they have to offer you. A storefront has to build a ramp because everyone deserves basic human decency, not because they want wheelchair users to spend money inside.

zooq_ai2• 2 years ago

Your App is successful because you didn't spend time on useless things like a11y, i18n during the p-m-f stage. If you look at every successful product in history, they didn't focus on a11y or i18n right from the bat.

Now, that it is successful, you can think about it and spend resources.

bee_rider• 2 years ago

It seems like quite an indictment of the tech sector to say that success happens because accessibility is ignored.

breakfastduck• 2 years ago

Not really.

Solving a new problem / use case is going to help you be successful, accessibility isn't novel. It's a feature.

rocqua• 2 years ago

Succes requires quickly testing if something works at all. Those tests don't need accessibility to be accurate, so they don't have accessibility.

What is important is that, when you found that something works and you start profiting from it, that you make it accessible. incidentally, this is how the EU law works aswell.

at_a_remove• 2 years ago

I think it is safer to say that accessibility is an one of many edge cases. Not important ... until it suddenly is.

I had many tricks to "sell" accessibility to the various clients and one of them was "What percentage of your potential users would you like to immediately piss off?" "How comfortable are you with random lawsuits? [Then you have to talk about the Target lawsuit]"

ativzzz• 2 years ago

Once you make an interface accessible, it becomes much harder to change that interface and add new functionality while maintaining accessibility.

This is why tech first finds an interface that works and makes money, and then turns around and makes it accessible.

thfuran• 2 years ago

And furthermore, that accessibility is useless.

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

This is a very common attitude; part of why I wrote this article was to demonstrate how easy it is to do the bare minimum!

callalex• 2 years ago

Are you really going to use the word “useless” here?

zooq_ai2• 2 years ago

Yes, if you offer something useful, people will jump through hoops to get it.

Remember all the original Download/Porn sites. Those had a11y issues even for regular users, yet it was popular. a11y matters only for useless websites because they can't afford for users to leave

npteljes4• 2 years ago

Now, this is why I like to see such things regulated with law. Because then a competitor, who spares the effort to care about, say, a11y, doesn't get ahead, but is instead punished.

It's not that a11y is a bad consideration, it's that creators are badly incentivized.

CrimsonRain• 2 years ago

no. All it'll do is empower those who are in lead esp the big techs because now a startup has to spend a significant amount of time fighting a11y stuff. There's a reason most (successful) startups are not from Europe. Too much bureaucracy for little ones to innovate.

If you become really big, you get x amount of time to implement a11y. Good enough balance.

PaulHoule2• 2 years ago

I was kinda shocked at how bad the UI framework broke down when the text size increased. I always thought iOS widgets seduced developers at the expense of users but here is the proof.

zer00eyz• 2 years ago

The very community who needs this, is inclined to ask first sue second.

The ADA exists and is a powerful law. If you are willing to put in the work, generally you're going to get a pass.

I wrote a bunch of accessibility guides (with a lawyer looking over my shoulder) around 2000 for a F500. I have since worked with blind users to add accessibility to apps. If someone is asking, and you can help them do it. You will have a massive advocate for what ever it is your doing!

mrguyorama3• 2 years ago

Indeed. You can literally spend as little effort as physically possible working on accessibility, and you will still be doing better than way too many businesses, and people with disabilities will still give you props for your literal minimal compliance.

aftbit• 2 years ago

Yeah for a decent period of time, the accessibility of Dropbox's desktop app was entirely dependent on one passionate blind forum user who called us out (politely!) every time we messed something up. It was a great, productive relationship that led to us continuing to release test builds on the forums for longer than we would otherwise have done so.

SamBorick• 2 years ago

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?

jnovek3• 2 years ago

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

m4632• 2 years ago

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.

sircastor4• 2 years ago

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.

hawski• 2 years ago

There is also a code angle. You can automate around graphical programs easier thanks to accessibility APIs.

floxy• 2 years ago

Speaking of curb cuts, recently in my town, they ripped up the sidewalks with already existing curb cuts, and added a new yellow pad with raised bumps in addition to new curbs (with the cuts). I was going to ask what this was for, but a quick search indicates that it is likely for blind users to feel the end of the sidewalk with a cane.

https://www.simplemost.com/sidewalk-bumps/?utm_partner=gray_...

avtar• 2 years ago

Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. Thinking about accessibility is likely to positively impact your product or service's user experience. Not everyone has low/no vision or uses a switch device, but keeping those users in mind will allow abled folks to benefit from your design choices as well. Have you ever used a UI and complained that elements provide ideal contrast, or that you're able to use your keyboard for interactions?

m4632• 2 years ago

I personally like closed captions and subtitles

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

chacham15• 2 years ago

Its not that they arent important when looked at by itself, but it just isnt as important as other things. Nobody cares if a car has poor ui if it doesnt actually work. Get it to run first, then make the ui nice. IIRC theres a phrase for this: make it work, make it right, make it fast.

asadotzler3• 2 years ago

Except you're not getting it to run first any more than the restaurant that opens with a "no blacks" sign got it to run first for whites. You're discriminating, excluding people based on things they have no control over because you couldn't get over your own self absorbed privilege not unlike operators of diners or busses or taxis in the US South 65 years ago.

ClawsOnPaws• 2 years ago

I used to bring up accessibility concerns quite a lot on HN. I have stopped however, because it is always the same story. It doesn't seem to matter how nice I am about it, or how accommodating I am towards people just hacking. I never want to stop people's creative spirit. Ever. But I'm one of those people who uses a screen reader. If your app does not work with them, it will not work for me. The amount of weirdly hostile responses I get really puts me off commenting here, so I just don't do it anymore. That doesn't make the issue go away, but it also just does not help. This isn't entirely unique to HN. It is very easy to dismiss accessibility concerns if you're not affected by them, or don't have anyone close that is. I try not to take it personally, but when many people chime in with comments like it's OK that you can't use this app, you're a minority, your burdens aren't anybody elses, and don't listen to them and go make a cool thing without regard, (not an exaggeration it's all in my comment history) it's a bit hard not to be put off by it. If I was able to change one or two minds with my little comments, then I'm very happy about that because maybe it means I get to use your next cool app too. I'm just not going to look for it here, and if I find an accessibility flaw, HN will definitely not be where I comment about it. I've gotten some genuinely good responses too. Some of you also tried to defend my point of view. Like Sam. And I'm very grateful for that. Sadly it's the same fight every single time, and I'm a little bit exhausted by it.

pvg• 2 years ago

Almost nobody is suggesting this and you can reply to whoever you think is wrong about something. It says 'sneer' in this thing but those are the values of 'sneer' that include 'harangue':

Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dylan6043• 2 years ago

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?

let's reverse that, did you as a youth give much thought to what the olds went through on a daily? obviously, depending on age, the olds might not have been using computers to the extent we are today, but it still holds. the hubris of youth is part of growing up. until you personally experience something, it is hard to fully grok it. sure, we can know somethings without experience like not drinking bleach is a good idea. there are other things that are just so outside of the normal experience, it is hard to fathom. for a lighter example, have you ever tried walking in a pair of high heels even if not stilettos? it's painful, and i was on platform heels. i would fall down in 3 seconds flat with stilettos. after several hours, i was complaining about my feet hurting in the shoes. so after walking a mile in another person's shoes, I will never be frustrated if someone in my group needs a break from their shoes during a long night out ever again.

slily• 2 years ago

Look, accessibility* is great and important to many people, and if you can afford to prioritize it early on in your product development, that's great - but it is not productive to treat commercial products like critical infrastructure, ignore the costs of implementing accessibility features (common tooling and standardization make it much easier, thankfully), and exaggerate the benefits.

The article starts off with the over-cited and misunderstood 1/6 figure, which comes from the WHO's claim that 1/6 of the world suffers from a "significant disability". I couldn't find a breakdown of what the WHO considers a significant disability in the first place, but the CDC in the US lists the following six disability categories in one of its studies: hearing, vision, cognitive, mobility, self-care, and independent living. How many of these are actually relevant in software? I have never once heard calls to make software more accessible to people with cognitive disabilities, and mobility/self-care/independent living categories are simply irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of software use cases. So no, you're not growing your audience by 1/6 by implementing screen-reader support for your website. If your product is growing, you're better off focusing on internationalization (which, technically, is a form of accessibility, but obviously not the subject of the article).

* Do we really need to abbreviate "accessibility" everywhere? It's just nine more characters than "a11y" and - speaking of accessibility - is more readable!

asadotzler3• 2 years ago

No, they don't understand. This isn't a forum of hackers any more, it's a forum of get rich quick capitalists trying to make bank on the latest popular trade. Accessibility is for losers, that's how sociopaths operate and Silicon Valley is a nest of them.

seanwilson• 2 years ago

Nice practical article. Accessibility is really important, but one of my pet peeves is when people call developers lazy for not making apps accessible by default. There really is a lot of concepts to learn, conflicting priorities, and tools to get familiar with, on top of making the business case to do it. Most developers and designers I've worked aren't that familiar with WCAG rules either.

By the way, the blue on yellow, and blue on green buttons won't pass color contrast requirements. Black on yellow will work, and white on blue (for darker blues) will work. Finding a set of branded colors that contrast as needed is tricky too.

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

Thank you for the comment :) Appreciate the feedback, tbh I was a little lazy and probably should have confirmed the 'improved' colour scheme actually worked

mcguire2• 2 years ago

Most developers and designers are unfamiliar with a major portion of their jobs.

That says quite a bit about professionalism in the software development field.

Zanfa• 2 years ago

Most developers and designers are unfamiliar with a major portion of their jobs.

Using spans with event listeners instead of anchor tags is my biggest pet peeve of incompetent frontend engineers. It’s like they go out of their way to take something that they get for free and then spend time and effort to break it.

acdha5• 2 years ago

I agree that there are a lot of other things to learn but accessibility is a legal and moral imperative, not just a nice to have feature. I think “lazy” might not be the right word since many developers don’t even know that they’re cutting corners, so perhaps it’s better to use “negligence” and realize that our field culturally encourages it rather than just blaming individuals.

infotainment3• 2 years ago

In the end, software accessibility represents an edge case affecting a tiny fraction of users.

You can argue it’s morally wrong to not support that edge case, but I do understand why it wouldn’t be a priority for most without legal prodding.

sircastor4• 2 years ago

For the last 12 years of his life, my father was in an electric wheelchair as a result of a stroke. Prior to that, I was vaguely aware of ADA compliance - basically because there were posted signs everywhere about parking spaces and restroom stalls.

It was only after seeing the ease with which he could navigate the world in spite of his chair that I appreciated how important that law was, because I also saw so many things that he wasn't able to do even though there was a law. Our entire world is built around and for people who see, hear, speak, walk, climb, and crawl.

As developers, I would say we're second only (maybe) to government in the ability to make the world accessible. I'm as guilty as anybody at this. Please make the effort to make your work as accessible as possible to everyone.

matsemann• 2 years ago

Tangentially related, but it's a bit interesting to see how many men get "radicalized" after being on paternity leave and pushing a stroller around. I'm volunteering on a board for an organization that (among other things) works for more accessible streets (more from an angle of less car dependence though), and we get lots of new members with this revelation. Suddenly they hate getting from point A to B; "It's just a short distance, why is everything making it so hard? Why are there curbs everywhere? Why isn't it wide enough for my stroller to pass? Why are there no big toilets where I can bring the kid with me? Why do I have to go a long way extra for an elevator?".

stn8188• 2 years ago

Oh man I feel this... My big thing is observing and pointing out how few men's restrooms have diaper changing tables. Some places are awesome with it, or with private family restrooms for this purpose. For the other places... Let's just say that I'm quite used to changing diapers on the seat of the van.

godelski4• 2 years ago

My partner had to use a wheelchair for awhile and it can still be useful (difficulties walking), and boy has it caused a strong desire to just keep a spare bag of concrete and a bucket in my trunk. Or even just metal shims. I've definitely got the same experience of "why is everything so __needlessly__ difficult?" When many could be solved or significantly eased with just a few dollars worth of materials.

Why do I have to go a long way extra for an elevator?

  - Why did I just walk past 3 flights of stairs on my way to the elevator?
  - Why did the handicap subway car drop me off at the far end of the station? 
  - Why did 3 people rush in front to get to the extra wide gate when there are 5 empty normal gates?
  - Why does the flat moving walkway have a divider that's meant to prevent bikes but also prevents a fucking wheelchair or walker!

The last one really triggers me... I mean I get why they do it but it also feels like a spit in the face (I'm glad they still help old people and those with limited mobility though). But come on....

godelski4• 2 years ago

I had a similar experience but with my partner. Wrote a longer rant[0].

It's quite hard to notice a lot of these things before you actually have to deal with them. I knew ramps were needed and automatic doors, but the shock was more about little things. But, a big thing I've noticed is that like 90% of things that would help us would make lives easier for normal people too. Which this was a big thing that opened my mind of how to address a lot of accessibility, is just think more deeply. If it affects a wheelchair it also affects a stroller, your wheeled baggage, things being dropped between cracks/small gaps, being able to clean between gaps (and subsequently the mold, water damage, grime, etc that makes things more costly in the long run!), your robot delivery drone, whatever. Ironically making the world more accessible for wheel-chaired people makes the world easier to robotize, which in turn can then also help disabled people. But the lesson is to think deep, because there are so many parallels. So if you hit upon one, you benefit the others. So you don't need to sit around thinking of every possible disability to make things accessible, which is a big blessing in itself. But if you think with care you will make the world much more accessible. No one expects to be perfectly accessible to everyone and disabled people know the world isn't going to bend to them, but that also doesn't mean we shouldn't try and care for our friends and family (other humans). But since it can help, just remember that a lot of things that help them will also help you.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39748213

acdha5• 2 years ago

But, a big thing I've noticed is that like 90% of things that would help us would make lives easier for normal people too.

This was a really common observation among the parents in our circles. You really notice things like missing curb cuts or bumpy sidewalks when pushing a stroller, so many things where only needing one hand is really helpful when holding a baby, having restroom stalls big enough to accommodate a wheelchair also means a stroller or second kid can fit, etc. A lot of people went from sort of vaguely thinking this is important to vocally backing accessibility at public meetings.

One important example: public bathrooms. Hatred of homeless people has driven a lot of American cities not to have them, which means people with certain conditions stay in or avoid certain areas. It also sucks for parents and I’ve noticed at planning meetings that one of those things which should not happen but does is that, say, an older low income person saying they’d use a park more if it had a background does not get the same response as, say, the affluent mom saying the same thing. It’d be nice if that didn’t require haggling but if it takes a coalition to get fixed at least it still happens. I noticed something similar with our local bike path expansion - motorized wheelchair users are looking forward to a smooth, safe, fast path, too.

dylan6043• 2 years ago

Our entire world is built around and for people who see, hear, speak, walk, climb, and crawl.

As a parent, I would disagree with the world is built for those that crawl. New parents are told/suggested to crawl around their house just to get a closer eye-level exprience of what their toddler will have.

sircastor4• 2 years ago

That's a fair point - I was thinking of how many times I've been able to crawl under my desk to get a thing I dropped, or plugged in a cable. But I hadn't thought of it in terms of being limited to crawling.

npteljes4• 2 years ago

Really similar to backups in this regard. People don't appreciate it, until they need it. Then it goes from "I don't care, leave me alone, inconvenience" to "life-saving essential thing, why doesn't everyone care about this all the time".

squigz3• 2 years ago

As developers, I would say we're second only (maybe) to government in the ability to make the world accessible

This isn't something I've really considered, but it's both very true and very important. Thank you

ulrischa• 2 years ago

I have to fight with this sentence since 2010. It is often overseen and startet in the public sector

croes• 2 years ago

Isn't it quite ironic to use a numeronym like a11y for the word accessibility?

donatj• 2 years ago

I've honestly always wondered if that might be the joke.

TheRealPomax4• 2 years ago

Amusingly: you'd think, but by being a uniquely new "word", it's actually far more discoverable.

Searching for "a11y" will find you results for accessibility specifically as it relates to web/app technologies, whereas searching for "accessibility" will find you results relating to everything. Of course that only works if everyone agrees to use it, but thankfully, everyone agreed to use it.

curtisblaine3• 2 years ago

Wasn't it chosen because it reads "ally" in leetspeak? Agree it's not incredibly accessible.

saalweachter• 2 years ago

That's probably a factor in its popularity, but it's in the category of "numerical contractions" like i18n [internationalization] or l10n [localization]. Numerical contractions were already very popular in the space of "making things work correctly for more people" [accessibility, localization, internationalization...].

csnover• 2 years ago

No, it is just a numeronym[0], just like K8s for Kubernetes, g11n for globalisation, i18n for internationalisation, or L10n for localisation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym

HappMacDonald• 2 years ago

It reminds me of the MAD Magazine parody claiming that "Hooked on Phonics" used the phone number "1-800-ABCDEFG" as a means to filter out the really difficult to teach people.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 2 years ago

I do my best to make all of my apps at least vision-impaired accessible.

The last app, I figured a way to make that easier to manage, and reward use by non-disabled folks.

I have a long-press help feature. If you long-press on any element in the UI, up pops a popover, with a header, and body text, pointing at the element. The popover explains that element.

It's fairly easy to have a long-press gesture recognizer applied to the main view, and dynamically figure out which element was hit. I then look for the accessibility items. If they are there, I do the popover.

I use the accessibilityLabel for the header, and the accessibilityHint for the text. It works extremely well, and no one has ever had it pop up when they weren't specifically trying for it.

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

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

1letterunixname2• 2 years ago

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

jwells89• 2 years ago

Yes, even just using UIKit will take you a decent way for a11y, and if you try to use parameterized fonts and colors where possible, replace image assets with SF Symbols, and fill in accessibility labels it’ll take you into the home stretch.

I’m still not perfect about it but have trying to make a habit to do these things and will periodically test apps I’m working on with e.g. large fonts enabled in Settings, which doubles as a layout robustness test and improves the experience for everybody since it prepares for edge cases that’d otherwise been missed.

freedomben8• 2 years ago

Indeed, I'm a very big critic of Steve Jobs and Apple, but when they prioritize stuff, they can do some damn fine work, and to this day they still have some terrific a11y features. Relatedly, "I don't care about the bloody ROI" was quite an incredible moment.

zem• 2 years ago

this is why i stick to gtk despite some very attractive looking new gui toolkits - gtk has solved its accessibility issues already, and the new toolkits mostly have it on the todo list.

TheRealPomax4• 2 years ago

Fun fact: it's far more than 16% because people tend to forget the two super most obvious accessibility requirements: being able to read text, and being able to interact with elements. About half of the planet has a visual disability that's bad enough to require a corrective medical device, and over 10% of the planet is just plain old. Tiny UI elements and small text are easily overlooked, huge problems.

LoganDark3• 2 years ago

About half of the planet has a visual disability that's bad enough to require a corrective medical device

Can you clarify how many people who merely need corrective lenses need to also rely on software accessibility features? The way you use "about half the planet" in your comment implies that every visual impairment is equal, and that all visual impairments result in increased accessibility needs.

My only accessibility need, funnily enough, is a high-DPI display, despite technically having impaired vision, because my vision at close distances (even corrected) is so much better than 20/20 that regular displays look distractingly pixelated to me.

TheRealPomax4• 2 years ago

The idea that "they don't need text controls because most people have glasses, so their vision isn't bad enough" is one of the reasons projects start thinking about a11y too late.

imwillofficial• 2 years ago

I couldn't get past the over usage of a11y

jakey_bakey14• 2 years ago

That's fair, I couldn't stomach typing the full word out an extra 46 times

elpocko2• 2 years ago

f6x t3s

godelski4• 2 years ago

I had some big life events bring a lot of this to my attention this year. I've always cared about accessibility, but never had to deal with it personally before[0]. Luckily I'm not in charge of anything that has real impact here. There are just so many little things that you might think are actually helpful but aren't. This can be something like the slope of a ramp, making it essentially useless for a wheelchair. You can tell that this was made by someone who referenced a manual which was created by some bureaucrat and there was probably no actual handicapped person involved. Or similarly gaps on the subway, she'd have to roll herself, get stuck, and wait for someone to help. OR because she _can_ walk, get out of her wheel chair, push it over the gap, and then sit back down, with everyone looking at her thinking she's a fraud. There's no winning. Sometimes to get to elevators we have to walk/roll past several flights of stairs...

Even a lot of phone UXs. The one that really infuriates me is when apps still zoom by sliding your finger up and down on the screen. It sucks as a normal person, it's impossible as a disabled person.

But the things we've noticed, is that essentially the things she struggles with are no different than what older people struggle with. Reduced grip, reduced hand mobility, getting tired more easily, difficulties walking, etc. She's still recovering and we're hopeful she'll keep increasing mobility, but it still gave us insight we'd never have seen without it.

Here's the thing, the world is just fucking complex and nuanced. We're never upset when we hit a piece of friction where we can tell someone was thinking but that the implementation was just incorrect, or where environments disrupt the implementation, or just when things are difficult to accommodate. I have a very "fit it" mindset (and used to be a traditional engineer, so do try to too).[1]

And here's the thing we've also found. Anything that helps us helps the elderly. Anything that helps us ALSO HELPS NORMAL PEOPLE. Most of the issues -- and certainly the most difficult to overcome -- look like they were implemented that way to save a few cents or because they were just rushing. Move fast and break things is a great strategy for getting to learn how something works and get prototypes, but it is not a good strategy for even moderately mature products. So move fast, break things, but make sure you come back and clean up and fix things. It is easy to push off because you're trying to get to the next thing, but I promise you that actually going back and fixing things will make your whole product develop faster. Think about how much of your time is spent rewriting your coworkers' code, or fixing things that should have never been done, or hacking around things (compounding the issue) because you can't directly access the thing you need. A significant amount of this is also reduced. Having a different mentality is needed to think about accessibility but if you focus on thinking deeply and about nuances of issues you'll automatically capture a lot of things that help disabled people too! e.g. the gap in the rail can be motivated for many reasons: things falling in between, people pushing strollers over, rolling bags, etc. If you had thought clearly about any of these issues you would have also helped the person in the wheelchair without having ever thought about them. Making an app more usable for the visually impaired helps normal people see from farther away, when they're sleepy, or hell, even drunk. So you don't need to spend hours thinking about every single possible disability, just think about the nuance of things and think about your tech illiterate family members. If you remember how complex the world is and just keep that in mind (you don't have to address everything!) you will be going above and beyond. The bar is low.

[0] Long story short, my partner had some amputations (we're only a tad over 30) because of a freak accident. Lost a thumb and partial movement in that index finger. Also has foot damage and so walking is hard. But other than that, she looks absolutely normal and strangely, this is problematic. She's been shoved by old people when she's trying to sit on the subway because they think she's just being a lazy young person. Or just realizing how many stairs there are... especially outside the US.

[1] On the other hand, we also get very excited when we see well implemented things. And the joy we get to see how people thought things through, even if it is something that is more helpful to disabilities we (she) doesn't face. Disabled people are well aware that the world isn't made for them, and most people aren't expecting the world to bend to fit them, but of course every person is frustrated when they experience unique frictions (especially when you're going through the shock of change).

austin-cheney3• 2 years ago

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 vision.

There are no blind soldiers in the army yet all Army digital communications are required to conform to federal regulations that accounts for accessibility. The result is higher quality products with greater availability.

Usually the best argument opposing accessibility is that the authors/developers don’t know what they are doing. When they say accessibility is too expensive that’s what they really mean, and it’s not a good argument.

dylan6043• 2 years ago

Solving for color contrast limitations benefits everyone even when people have perfect vision.

I saw another IRL example of this in yet another football match over the weekend where one team was in a blue jersey with the other team in a black jersey. I'm not even color blind, yet it was hard for me to immediately distinguish players. I really miss the old days of home team in their club's color, with the away team in a predominately white jersey.

So not even remotely UI/front-end related to a tech forum, but color contrast is a basic way humans separate things. It is not nice to mess with that for normal things.

cogman10• 2 years ago

When they say accessibility is too expensive that’s what they really mean, and it’s not a good argument.

Disabilities can be conflicting which makes catering to all difficult.

Consider, for example, that someone who is deaf will usually use a flashing light to wake them up. However, if you are someone that's prone to seizures, that flashing light is now something that can trigger a medical emergency.

Now consider how fire alarms typically work, big flashing lights and loud sirens.

With accessibility you kind of can't please everyone. Not saying you shouldn't try, but there needs to be some level of "best effort" applied.

mrguyorama3• 2 years ago

Notably, none of this matters if you aren't an entitled jerk and make accessibility features an option!!

There's been a new trend in modern videogames to show you a screen with a few accessibility options before the game even finishes starting. I am not disabled, and yet often feel like I benefit from some options or others.

Stop pretending you know better than your customers/users/visitors. Let them make the choices that make your product best for their usages. Stop treating users like children and we stop having these kinds of problems.

bnralt• 2 years ago

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 to improve my personal situation is going to insure a cost that means that others are going to have less of something. None of this is free.

Where that line gets drawn is open for debate, but a lot of comments seem to be livid that people are suggesting the line should be drawn somewhere. Life is about compromise, and trying to do the most with finite resources. Understanding that tradeoffs exist is a basic requirement for creating a functioning society.

JadeNB3• 2 years ago

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.

kriops3• 2 years ago

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?

zymhan3• 2 years ago

You're shoving the strawman down the slippery slope. That is not an honest/genuine question.

freeone3000• 2 years ago

“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.

mardifoufs2• 2 years ago

I don't get the last part of your comment. They can know what they are doing but the costs might be a problem. There are added costs to supporting accessibility, that's just a fact. No level of competency would make adding accessibility features not more expensive. I can bet you that whatever code you've ever written isn't fully accessible. That's impossible, as accessibility is a spectrum.

The question is which features are a must and a bare minimum and which of them are not. If your job doesn't care about accessibility (which is bad, don't get me wrong) and doesn't pay you for adding say, colorblindness support or TTS, that has nothing to do with being competent.

Accessibility is also in huge part related to cultural context. Sure, blind people and people in wheelchairs exist everywhere, but as an example where I'm from literacy is not universal. People can read for the most part but some have a very hard time reading, and TTS doesn't solve the issue in my experience. Does your website support that? Does it support a lot of visual elements/videos instead of text? Or a simplified version of the language? Does it make you incompetent, and does it make sense to add a completely different UI mode for them? That's what I mean with it being a spectrum.

nfw23• 2 years ago

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 experts because eyes can process a lot of information very quickly across two dimensions, and UX designers often take this for granted. Translating complex experiences into comprehensible text-only applications often takes creativity and effort.

I'm not saying accessibility isn't important, but these kinds of arguments that it is always cheap and easy often actually make it harder for engineers to get the resources they need to implement it successfully.

Aerroon• 2 years ago

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.

seabass-labrax• 2 years ago

ARIA markup on HTML only benefits those using assistive technology.

This specific case: ARIA labels also help search engine indexers find pages and extract information within pages more effectively. Excluding contemporary concerns about search engines intercepting advertising revenue by doing this, it is undoubtedly better for the able-sighted and blind user alike to have the option of finding an answer by visiting one page rather than two.

More philosophically: if accessibility makes things easier for people with a disability, that means it is easier for someone emulating a disability. For instance, whenever I'm holding something in one hand, I'm effectively emulating the abilities of a physically one-handed person, so if you make a design that works for one-handed people, you're also giving everyone else the extra opportunity to multitask.

I'm not saying accessibility isn't important, but these kinds of arguments that it is always cheap and easy often actually make it harder for engineers to get the resources they need to implement it successfully.

Parent poster wasn't saying it is cheap and neither would I, but whilst the incidental benefit of accessibility improvements to able-bodied people might not seem obvious, it always exists.

creesch• 2 years ago

implementing ARIA markup on HTML only benefits those using assistive technology.

I'd argue that implementing ARIA markup properly also makes developers consider the general markup and structure of their product. Which in turn can lead to better UX in general, as it will lead to new insights. Yes, training developers does cost time so it is an expensive. That's often true for anything that will improve your product.

Moreover, not every web product is simple to make accessible even by experts because eyes can process a lot of information very quickly across two dimensions, and UX designers often take this for granted.

Do you think that UX designers who take this for granted are good UX designers? I'd say that if they take it for granted that eyes can process more information, that they might need a refresher course on UX. Designs that lean heavily on visually cues and have a lot of them generally tend to be too complex and cause a visual overload.

A bonus benefit of ARIA markup is that if you have any automated UI tests they benefit from good ARIA markup and generally tend to be a bit more stable than tests using regular classes and IDs.

markhnthoraway• 2 years ago

I do think training developers and designers on accessibility is a core part of having them ship professional quality work. Even if product people and designers aren't thinking about it, I think it's reasonable to expect competent front-end developers to understand how to implement designs to some professional standard that doesn't make the page unusable for people with disabilities and expose the company to lawsuits.

On the other hand I don't think the business really knows/cares what HTML you use, they just can reasonably trust people to implement stuff in the "right" way, which 90% of time is identify the correct HTML to represent the nature and structure of the design and build out from there. You'd expect things to "just work" when you are paying for front-end specialists.

frereubu• 2 years ago

I think the argument is more along the lines of "if you look after the pennies, the pounds look after themselves," not the slight straw man of "every single little accessibility improvement benefits every single user." If you have accessibilty at the heart of what you're doing then it will almost inevitably improve the product for everyone to some extent. My argument would be stronger, in that I think there's a very high probability that it will improve the product significantly for a large proportion of your audience.

austin-cheney3• 2 years ago

Accessibility is not always cheap and easy. I am only saying it isn’t more expensive if you know what you are doing.

In my 15 year career as a JavaScript developer all the biggest failures were directly attributed to poor training and leadership qualifying low standards. At some point people would do themselves a huge service by admitting they are too lazy/inept to train their staff and they deliver shit as a result. I got tired of all the weak excuses so now I do something else for a living.

madeofpalk6• 2 years ago

Developers often think about accessibility, or disabilities, as a stark binary. You're either completely "disabled" (whatever that means), or your not.

However reality is much more nuanced. We're all, at best, temporarily "abled". Whether you need glasses, or your fingers have raw chicken juice on them for cooking, or you started going to the gym and your muscles ache too much to walk, or have a newborn and can't turn the TV up too loud.

We all go through various levels of impairments over our lives that can make use of assistive technologies. "Accessibility" really is just usability, and building products for real people.

lhamil64• 2 years ago

As someone who's legally blind, this has always bugged me. It's like the trend of "dark mode", I've always found it easier to see white text on a black background but it seems like a relatively recent trend that it's becoming normal for apps/sites to actually be designed with that in mind.

Also as a slight tangent, public transportation! The US being so car dependant really hinders my independence, and better public transportation would benefit everyone (except car manufacturers, I suppose)

BenFranklin100• 2 years ago

That’s your experience/opinion but it’s a step too far to claim ADA reqs should be applied universally and are an unalloyed good. For instance, some badly needed housing has routinely been denied because it’s too often impossible to make, say, accessory dwelling units wheelchair friendly. These ADA requirements thus limit supply, in turn raising rents, and causing real harm to younger, poorer people who are without affordable homes. Your example about contrast correction reeks of entitlement as well. I am also older, and bought a pair of reading glasses instead of expecting to push the cost onto society as a whole.

asadotzler3• 2 years ago

As someone with an architecture, building science and accessibility background I challenge that.

Done well, building new affordable housing with appropriate accessibility does nothing to cut into profit margins for builders. The tax breaks and other pubic dollars almost always deliver more than the cost of ensuring common areas are accessible and a few units have slightly varied doors and bathrooms (mostly.)

That builders don't want to build more affordable housing is its own problem, but not because of ADA requirements. In general, the ADA doesn't say much about low income housing except explicitly government owned and managed housing, BTW. The ADA is overwhelmingly concerned with public accommodations (businesses open to the public) and government and public spaces, not private home construction.)

It's almost exclusively the lower profit margins for price capped construction and not the minimal a11y requirements easily covered for anyone taking public money and who is building affordable housing and not taking government money, that are the root of our affordable housing shortage.

Accessibility is an unalloyed good and your bogus attempt at providing an alternative example is easily shot down. Pick an example you actually know something about and try again.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

The universal good, and unappreciated reality, about accessibility is that it benefits everyone.

I think there are many cases where it benefits everyone, but probably many more cases where it has no positive OR negative effect for the median user. It doesn't improve the UX in a way that makes a difference to them.

The question in this, as in all things, is whether enough of your users will benefit from accessibility improvements to justify the marginal cost of implementing them versus not implementing them. And, at a more granular level, which improvements can be made to get the most benefit for the least cost.

You could probably more accurately say that accessibility never hurts anyone. But even that might get an objection, because there is a cost to implementing it, compared to working on new features, or polishing old ones.

TRiG_Ireland• 2 years ago

Am I the only person who finds that subtitles often detract from the experience rather than enhance? I mostly watch either comedy shows or quiz shows, and am a fast reader. I find that the subtitles often come up too early and mess with the timing. Bad for the comedy; inexcusable for the quizzes.

1letterunixname2• 2 years ago

Ethical devs and legally-compliant organizations develop for a11y.

Resources:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility

https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/tools/list

https://developer.apple.com/accessibility/

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/develop/acces...

https://wiki.gnome.org/Accessibility

rifty• 2 years ago

I run into this issue a fair bit because I enable 'larger text' for the display zoom option on my iPhone. I do this because I find it is just more comfortable to do things on the screen with one hand when there are larger hit boxes.

I think 'accessibility' can be reframed as being more generally about flexible configuration and control for everyone to benefit from.

For such personal devices it's not just about about disability, it's about the freedom I want as a user to mold an interface to actually fit me and my usage style moment to moment. Sometimes I want a screen read to me or just a section of it. I'm not visually impaired, I just might not want to look at the screen.

lamontcg• 2 years ago

I like that this article was about solving the problem and not lecturing the person that they should have done it all up front before it was ever successful.

neomantra3• 2 years ago

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, both consumer and developer. Maybe that's because it's not universal what should be there?

So I had to insert it myself. I was scared to make a repo sharing these changes, but I will drop the GitHub one here:

In `<svg>` element I added:

    role="img"
    aria-label="[title + description]"

Nested inside I put:

    <title>GitHub Octocat Logo</title>
    <desc>An Octocat shadow in front of a white circle</desc>

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4697100/accessibility-re...

[2] https://about.meta.com/brand/resources/instagram/instagram-b...

[3] https://github.com/logos

madeofpalk6• 2 years ago

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 remove information from the site?), just blank it out with an empty string.

neomantra3• 2 years ago

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?

cogn1zance• 2 years ago

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.

darajava• 2 years ago

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.

freedomben8• 2 years ago

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

fngjdflmdflg4• 2 years ago

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.

bmitc2• 2 years ago

For software accessibility, I get the importance, but I personally have no idea where to start. Cross-platform windowing, graphics, fonts, and audio are already insanely difficult. How does one do cross-platform accessibility?

dmazzoni4• 2 years ago

Every cross-platform GUI toolkit I've ever seen has accessibility support. You just need to learn how to use it.

bmitc2• 2 years ago

But that required those platforms, such as Qt and Flutter, to figure it out in a bespoke manner. I am not aware of any existing cross-platform accessibility frameworks.

m3kw92• 2 years ago

Is why you go native UI methods as much as possible(iOS) it comes with a lot of accessibility by default. Also fonts and colours if possible as they provide dynamic sizing and contrast.

m3kw92• 2 years ago

Supporting speak text is especially difficult because you have to sequence the texts depending on your layouts.

friedtofu• 2 years ago

This post reminded me of a video I found really cool from a couple years back where Masahiro Sakurai(creator of Kirby, Super Smash Bros) talked about the importance of accessibility options and how Japanese developers - at the time, were lagging behind their western counterparts. He shows examples from and references Sony/Naughty Dog's 'The Last of Us'.

I'm not sure if this is something that Sakurai influenced or not, though I have noticed larger Japanese AAA game studios adding more and more features in terms of accessibility in the last couple years from studios such as Ryu Go Gotoko(Yakuza series), Capcom(Resident Evil, Street Fighter), and FromSoft(Dark Souls, Elden Ring)

kenneth• 2 years ago

Is it really that hard to type the word "accessibility" that we need to come up with a silly shorthand version of it?

mablopoule• 2 years ago

It's in line with internationalization, shortened as 'I18n', while doing a cute play on world 'ally', not sure what the fuss is about.

atoav• 2 years ago

I think accessibility is probably one of the first things you should think about. Not because it is that important to you, but because when you decide to use this or that technology, this or that framework, accessability should be somewhere on the list of pros and cons for each choice.

Unless of course you're just experimenting and it seamlessly turns into a serious thing by accident, that is.

RileyJames• 2 years ago

Does anyone know a similarly good guide for testing / retro fitting a11y to a web app?

Asking for a friend…

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

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