[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Today Is Global Accessibility Awareness Day
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Tell HN: Today Is Global Accessibility Awareness Day
As builders and creators we want to maximize our impact. There's a
lot of talk about ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance).
Which for most us is pretty abstract and something only really big
companies invest a small % of their revenue into to attract certain
kinds of investors (there are exceptions). One way we can all
directly make impact is making a commitment to make our software
accessible to all, starting with educating ourselves about common
mistakes folks make when designing UI that produce software that
can't be used by folks who have temporary or long term low vision,
low hearing, neurological, and other disabilities. There are a ton
of free educational events on accessibility going on today, and if
you don't have time today, find a recording, or listen to a
podcast, there is a huge opportunity to make impact once you better
understand the challenges. A couple of years ago while doing
research on accessibility I came across the Global Accessibility
Awareness Day, and the GAAD foundation (https://accessibility.day/)
- there are many such orgs, but if you consider yourself
accessibility curious, today's a good day to get curious. /PSA
Author : bcx
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-05-18 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
| [deleted]
| butz wrote:
| Any decent enterprise oriented (datatables and similar controls)
| UI frameworks, that have decent accessibility? JS framework
| agnostic solution is more welcome, but ReactJS or VueJS
| frameworks are welcome too.
| hiidrew wrote:
| Love this! We had a department-wide meeting where we showcased a
| usability test with a participant using a screen reader. Had a
| lot of engagement and was enlightening of the many issues screen
| reader users face when navigating relatively straight forward web
| pages.
|
| A good ethos for accessible design is that making designs
| accessible and inclusive often the raises the bar for the average
| non-disabled user.
|
| 99% invisible has a good podcast on this with the development of
| the curb-cut. Oriignally it was for wheelchairs but it turns out
| to help parents with strollers as well!
|
| Also love to point to the disability persona spectrum. Shows how
| disabilities can vary from permanent, temporary, and situational.
| I think the Microsoft's Inclusive Design Toolkit is partly
| responsible for it (but doesn't appear in the deck).
|
| - https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-cuts/
|
| - https://infinum.com/handbook/img/accessibility/Persona_spect...
|
| - https://scope.bccampus.ca/pluginfile.php/52293/block_html/co...
| bcx wrote:
| Yes AND!
|
| It's pretty amazing what you can accomplish with a philosophy
| of progress over perfection, the right framing, and some
| specific goals.
|
| I'd challenge you all to set some public goals for
| accessibility (even if they are small) (for ideas: you could
| see what we've been doing, see:
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/olarks-accessibility-journey-...
| , which links out to the goals and results for the past 3
| years)
|
| and then check back on them in a year. NOTE: if you are inside
| a bigger org, odds are you won't be able to post it super
| publicly, but at least write them down somewhere and come back
| to them to check progress, and set goals for the next period.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| The reality is to keep up with all this is a waste of time for
| most small and medium businesses.
|
| Unfortunately there are more customers who aren't handicapped.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| This is false, because accessibility helps everyone. There are
| examples of customers who are temporarily impaired being
| assisted by options for people that might have only partial use
| of one hand, or options for colorblind people improving the
| overall design of your site.
|
| For example, there are still games created which do not support
| button remapping because why would they? It's an accessibility
| option, they don't need to support 'everyone'. But I, as
| someone who is not disabled, use it because it allows me to
| make the controls more comfortable.
| bcx wrote:
| I'd challenge you to expand your understanding of disability
| and ability.
|
| Small and Medium businesses "waste time" on all sorts of
| things, one anecdote that might help your libertarian leanings
| is that majority of disabilities are age related, and the
| majority of the wealth is controlled by older folks who are far
| more likely to just not spend money at said small/medium
| business without providing any feedback to said inaccessible
| business.
|
| In general, I might look at the "curb cut effect". Curb cuts
| are those things you see on sidewalks that let folks roll
| bikes, carts, strollers, walkers, and even wheel chairs when
| cross streets. You might take for granted that the build
| environment for folks is far more accessible than it was in the
| 80s pre ADA.
|
| My philosophy is well designed systems fully embrace the
| constraints and benefit everyone.
| nathanfig wrote:
| Consider that everyone who ages will someday require
| accessibility features. I suspect most developers will
| eventually find themselves wishing they had created a more
| accessible world.
| ironmagma wrote:
| As someone with limited vision, I agree. The actual solution is
| enabling system-wide tools to work around the non-
| accessibility-aware applications.
| fwr wrote:
| Accessibility is easily overlooked but in my opinion provides a
| much more direct and widespread impact than the mentioned ESG -
| and often provide value to more people than originally intended -
| I'm thinking of subtitles in videos that immensely helped me
| learn English, and public infrastructure adaptations for
| wheelchair users which also greatly benefit others - like mothers
| with strollers.
|
| I wish more things were designed with an accessibility-first
| mindset - enabling edge cases might seem like overkill at first,
| but it could bring unforseen advantages.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Regarding prioritizing - I feel Accessibility is in battle with
| Denial.
|
| - Have you also witnessed your product-business / employer
| ignoring user pain to chase MVP?
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| So look at this as changing the definition of what "minimum
| viable" means in your organization.
|
| Maybe you can make the case for why every link and image
| should have aria tags, since it's a new app and assets are
| more likely to be missing.
|
| Or maybe you know that keyboard controls need to be
| implemented, but you didn't consider focus trapping for
| assistive users.
|
| Accessibility isn't a binary, but a sliding scale. At the top
| of the market you get insanity like WCAG AAA, which straight
| up invalidates most of the modern web because it's so
| restrictive.
| gnicholas wrote:
| There are GAAD gatherings in various cities, and online
| gatherings. You can browse the listings here, [1] and in future
| you can also submit your own gathering to be included as well.
|
| 1: https://accessibility.day/events/
| kindawinda wrote:
| Hadn't heard about them until today and saw where they released a
| thoughtful rap song. Can only find it on youtube haven't seen it
| on Spotify yet but I teared up.
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jennison_accessibility-daze-a...
| kindawinda wrote:
| Okay I spoke too soon already answered:
| https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7064952...
| y-curious wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I will look at these resources. Our app is
| made for people that definitely have vision (it enables doctors
| that read EEGs) but we can still improve for other levels of
| accessibility.
| malfist wrote:
| Accessibility is for more than just disabled people!
|
| I've recently had surgery on my shoulder, and have to have my
| left arm in a sling with no use for 6 weeks. I've made heavy use
| of my phone's one handed mode, and window's sticky keys
|
| When my partner goes to bed at night, I can keep watching Star
| Trek TNG with subtitles.
| robin_reala wrote:
| You're a disabled person then. Sure, you're temporarily
| disabled rather than permanently, but that doesn't matter.
|
| One lens for looking at disability is that a disability is a
| system's inability to cope with a particular user's set of
| needs.
| barbaric_melons wrote:
| Right. Disability seems to convey a negative still, much like
| there's something missing and it's a bad thing. There is a
| study that said a majority of disabled people with invisible
| disabilities would never identify publicly as disabled. So
| I'm willing to bet most of those people don't take to the
| idea that having a disability is more of a social issue then
| anything else.
| pesfandiar wrote:
| This is so true. I once saw a diagram[1] in an accessibility
| training that drove this point very well for me. You don't need
| to have a disability to appreciate accessible software.
|
| [1] It looked like this: https://www.coursearc.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/03/Persona...
| SilasX wrote:
| Yep. And anything that makes a website easier to use with a
| screenreader, also makes it easier to write addons that enhance
| the UI for everyone.
| zmnd wrote:
| For people with more accessibility expertise, why instead of
| pushing all websites to be accessible, there's no push for a
| better accessibility AI? I would imagine that having a better
| interpretation model, implemented by a couple of tech giants,
| would be a more productive use of our time than ensuring that all
| aria labels are in place? Is it because nobody is working in this
| problem space? It sounds fairly straightforward problem to solve,
| comparing to some recent achievements.
| devinprater wrote:
| It's been tried. See accessibility overlays. And they all suck.
| zmnd wrote:
| We have tried neural nets before as well. But technologies
| and constraints are changing. I just took a screenshot of the
| Facebook feed, and segment-anything model was able to
| identify most of the elements, even without proper fine-
| tuning. Scrapping billions of elements with classifications
| is also something fairly trivial.
|
| I, perhaps naively, think that training a better model(s)
| that helps with accessibility is a much better path forward
| for users that need it. Just a genuine question, not sure why
| I am getting downvoted. By no means, I am implying that this
| is not important.
| bitwize wrote:
| I've started training myself on Emacspeak, so if my vision ever
| goes away or is severely compromised, I am still able to operate
| (and write programs for) a computer. I found it pretty amazing
| that I could write and test a short program with my eyes closed.
| Emacspeak is an outlier in the open source ecosystem when it
| comes to accessibility, however, and that's to everyone's
| detriment. It comes from an old-school Unix mentality of "let's
| write programs in such a way that loosely coupled bits and bobs
| can be attached and integrated to suit custom needs" rather than
| the GNOMEish "we've already thought of the common case and
| developed a comprehensive solution, you will use it and like it,
| fuck your obscure little corner cases".
| neets wrote:
| So who comes up with all these [X] days?
| bcx wrote:
| I was curious too. Joe and Jennison started GAAD 12 years ago
| from a discussion on a forum/blog post
| (https://accessibility.day/about/). So I suppose if you want to
| put 10 years into trying to get something mainstream, you too
| could start a day for something that folks weren't paying
| enough attention too ;).
|
| That said, I'd say Global Accessibility Awareness Day is
| mainstream enough at this point to be called out, given that
| it's being mentioned at the bottom of Apple's press releases
| for accessibility
| (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-previews-
| live-s...)
| m1n1 wrote:
| I mentioned to a police officer recently that pounding on
| someone's front door while yelling "Police!" doesn't always
| succeed in communicating. Some people are hard of hearing. Some
| get distracted by the noise and therefore can't hear the words
| (they may have their own noise on their side of the door). Some
| have a fight/flight/freeze response to any loud noise, regardless
| of the context, and can't think straight.
|
| I figured he'd be interested in suggestions on how to raise the
| likelihood the occupants would know it's the police and not some
| gang bangers. Especially since it could save lives on both sides
| of an incident, including his.
|
| He wasn't personally interested in yet another thing to
| carry/deploy/remember when he knocks on doors, and said we can't
| worry about every "edge case". Whatever I said, he tended to push
| back.
|
| But after I pressed him some more, he said I could email a
| suggestion to my state's peace officer standards and training
| "POST" org. (usa)
| dannyw wrote:
| What could be done instead?
| bitwize wrote:
| There was a story back in the 90s about a Japanese guy who
| didn't understand what was meant when a cop yells "Freeze!" and
| was shot dead by police because of it.
|
| We really have to train new attitudes into our police, starting
| with the idea that as peace officers, their first priority is
| to keep the peace, like "first do no harm" for doctors, and not
| roll into every situation expecting to get a chance to be Dirty
| Harry.
| 98codes wrote:
| > educating ourselves about common mistakes folks make when
| designing UI
|
| The main issue I see is that most devs simply do not care, and/or
| dev management not prioritizing it unless required by
| regulations.
|
| The biggest problem I see is that isn't likely ever going to
| change.
| gnicholas wrote:
| One way to combat this is to reframe disability/accessibility
| as universal design or inclusive design. Then refer to the many
| ways that approaches, features, and tools that make a product
| more accessible can also improve overall usage metrics or other
| KPIs.
|
| In the olden days, people referred to the "curb cut" -- the
| smooth cutout at the edge of a curb that allows a wheelchair
| user to traverse from street level onto the curb. This turns
| out to be useful for UPS drivers with dollies, parents with
| strollers, and many other users as well.
|
| In the digital world there are other examples, including better
| SEO ratings for websites that have proper accessibility and can
| be more accurately parsed by web crawlers.
|
| I've found that if you present both the accessibility benefits
| and the business benefits, you can make a lot more progress
| than if you just rely on one or the other.
| unix_fan wrote:
| I think the open source community has failed screen reader users.
| You cannot use Linux with a desktop environment without major
| accessibility issues layered throughout. It's particularly
| frustrating when bug reports are ignored for years and are never
| fixed at all. This is why I continue to prefer windows or macOS
| over linux.
|
| Stuff like Jupyter notebooks are also not accessible, making it a
| little bit harder for visually impaired people in stem
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Frankly, every web developer should be excited about
| accessibility. It's not just about obscure tag attributes that
| are invisible to most users. Following the WCAG will actually
| make your design better by guiding you towards text with
| sufficient contrast, and to not neglect to add labels to form
| inputs, _etc_.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Agreed. But to be fair, it's not developers calling these
| shots. Unless it's a priority of leadership, management,
| product managers, project managers, etc. then it's not going to
| be a priority of the dev team.
|
| Sad, but true.
| ncr100 wrote:
| If we, as developers & designers, focus on the sexiness of
| accessibility, it might popularize those features,
| internally.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| It might. But unless we control estimates, budget and/or
| burn rate, the needle isn't going to move.
| tudorw wrote:
| If you are UK based there are certain requirements that
| leadership down should be aware of,
| https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/helping-people-to-use-
| your....
| ccooffee wrote:
| I worked for a US government contractor. According to US
| law, any software we sold to the federal government has to
| make accessibility a primary concern. The company never
| paid more than lip service to the idea. (The closest we
| ever got was showing that a particular screen reader
| _could_ make sense of a very very small part of the
| application.)
|
| Eventually the company was sued by a former user who had
| been fired from a US government job for low performance
| when using the company's software. The company settled out
| of court for some amount of money, but never changed the
| company policies. To my knowledge, that company still
| doesn't take accessibility seriously despite the law and
| despite having settled at least one court case about it.
|
| Perhaps the UK is able to enforce their requirements in a
| way to actually cause changes in behavior, but it wasn't
| the case in the US in the 2010s.
| jph wrote:
| Accessibility is the lynchpin of my current work-- I'm applying
| for a UK Global Talent Visa to create pro-bono mobile apps for
| people with cognitive/motor/vision impairments. Accessibility
| improvements can have enormous benefits for people in need.
|
| See BoldContacts.org, and you can email me at
| joel@joelparkerhenderson.com. I'm seeking help with app dev,
| healhcare outreach, and the UK visa.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Question, why is this different than a proper _usability study_?
| If I am not mistaken, Jacob Nielsen has been proselytizing this
| for decades.
| eckmLJE wrote:
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-usability-...
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