Comment by originalsimba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by originalsimba | Hacker News Reader

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This is a problem not limited to the development and design circles. It's a human problem. Disabled people are relatively rare, and so humans have a tendency to forget they exist.

To some extent developers are a product of their customers' demands. If customers are emphasizing dirt prices ($200 websites what the hell is going on?) and launch deadlines of "a couple of hours", they aren't thinking about accessibility, along with a half dozen other things.

It's really become evident to me since web development became a focus of my career, that people remain blissfully unaware of those less fortunate than them. Which we should shame out of them in my respected opinion.

At the very least, all visual elements should include an alt tag.

Making your content "readable" is a good idea anyway.

One last thing, and sorry such a long comment, it occurs to me maybe a lot of websites aren't "accessible" because things like Alt tags would expose the manipulative subliminal tactics of the design.

> Disabled people are relatively rare, and so humans have a tendency to forget they exist.

This is how many people think about accessibility, especially starting out (myself included). An alternative framing is to realize that some people have permanent disabilities, some have temporary disabilities, and some have situational disabilities.

For example, about 15 percent of people have dyslexia. They have a more-or-less permanent challenge with reading. In the second category are people with temporary reading challenges. Someone with a concussion, stroke, or other traumatic brain injury often have similar reading challenges, that sometimes (but not always) can get better over time. And in the last category, we have people who have situational challenges, such as "I'm on in the subway and the car is moving in 3 axes and I'm trying to read on my smartphone". This is a situational challenge, but a challenge nonetheless.

If we focus only on the first category of people, the group who might be assisted by a reading-related accessibility feature seem relatively small. But when you realize that there are also temporary and situational challenges that can be ameliorated by the exact same feature, then it becomes clear that the number of people who can be helped is actually much greater than originally appeared.

Ditto for "wheelchair ramps" that are used by people with strollers or crutches for broken legs.

Disabled people are relatively rare

Rare? "Disabled" people are so common, politicians bend over backward to cater to them at the expense of others. An entire organization is devoted to service them: the AARP, where "RP" stands for "retired people". Because many over 50 are going to have a hard time reading your tiny-print, low-contrast, gray-on-light-gray website.

"Accessibility" != ("make exceptions for disabled people" WHERE "disabled people" == "protected class"). "Accessibility" means a lot of things. Maybe it's color-deficient sight ("color blind"). Maybe I lost hearing in one ear because of a tragic toilet lid accident. Maybe I'm just over 40 and wear reading glasses. Just because a user might not have a handicapped placard hanging from their rear view mirror doesn't mean they don't find your "innovative" design annoying.

> This is a problem not limited to the development and design circles. It's a human problem. Disabled people are relatively rare, and so humans have a tendency to forget they exist.

This is a completely misguided notion. There are many types of disabilities out there, some can be apparent to the outside observer (physical disabilities) but there are many which are not apparent (mental and sensory disabilities).

1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women throughout the world are affected by colorblindness.

Epilepsy affects 2.5-3 million individual in the United States.

Hearing loss and vision loss will affect most individuals during the course of their entire lives.

These disabilities and others are all considerations relevant to web and software development, with so many affected populations throughout the world disabilities are much more common than you or I might perceive.

But it's really not a question of perception among developers. Accessibility guidelines are relevant to some industries more than others, enforcement is sparse. If it became necessary to support all users and take into account their accessibility needs then we would see a change in the marketplace. The short answer is that developers and product managers who do not take accessibility into account with their products are lazy.

Accessibility to disabled people is the right goal, but at this point, I'm often happily surprised to see software that is even accessible to fully abled people! So much software out there (on the web and otherwise) look and behave as if their purpose was to fill a spot on a slide deck, fill out the "frameworks" section of a developer's resume, or look sleek in an artist's portfolio, rather than be used by actual human users.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that with hobby projects, people often do the first 80% of the work, see that the concept works, and then move on before finishing the other 80%. There really aren't THAT many hours in a day.

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