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Comment by csande17 | Hacker News Reader

People with visual disabilities make up about 2.5% of the US adult population. (Source: https://nfb.org/resources/blindness-statistics#)

People who do not speak English natively make up about 20% of the US population, and around 8% of the US cannot speak English fluently. (Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_Stat... , http://blog.languageline.com/limited-english-proficient-cens...)

So if you're aiming for maximum inclusivity, you should consider translating your app into Spanish a higher priority than adding ARIA tags.

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Unlike learning a language, blindness is not something which can be overcome with education.

I've tried learning multiple languages and have lived abroad and learning another language for me was not easy or fast despite years of studying and practicing the language.

No one said it was fast or easy. Given a long enough timeline and some daily effort, you can most likely learn another language.

You can't study yourself to un-blindness.

So? You still learned it. You can't learn to see if you're blind.

Just because something is possible you shouldn't go around expecting it from anybody. Learning a language just for a website is dumb and nobody is going to do it, so the website is essentially just as unaccessible to someone who doesn't speak the language as someone who's blind.

I don't think you understand that my argument wasn't necessarily contrary to yours, just stating that it's certainly easier to learn a language than it is to not be blind. Both of which are unfair expectations to thrust upon anyone.

So you can expect thousands to learn English because of your one website, but it's immoral that some disabled people will just have to miss out on your website because you can't be bothered to spend countless hours on accessibility?

Honestly, that statement is about as dumb as saying "Blindness can be overcome with science, all those blind people should just start working on artificial eyes".

If you only look at market advantage, yes. But from a risk management perspective, non-English speakers are not a protected class so it's not legally discrimination if you don't translate it but it is if you fail to make it accessible to people with disabilities.

If all you care about is the US.

Presumably the 2.5% figure is reasonably similar in many other countries, as opposed to the % who speak spanish, which will be higher in spain but lower in kenya.

Except disabled kenyans won't really benefit from your english site being more accessible. Translating into spanish, on the other hand, will benefit lots of people outside the USA, for example in Mexico or Spain. So by extending the scope to outside the USA, you're essentially making an even stronger point that localization > accessibility

> localization > accessibility

Speaking as a disabled (visually impaired) user here: Chrome can translate many websites while keeping their functionality intact, to the point where for many tasks, understanding the local language of that website is not a requirement. Granted, we can say this is for simple tasks, things that we already know how to do in our native language and are much the same across the world. But I'm living in a country where the majority of people don't speak English and the majority of websites and apps don't have an option to switch them into English. I'm still learning the local language, which is a slow process, but I don't feel too bad using websites here to get things done.

Chrome can't improve the accessibility of an inaccessible website or app, full-stop. If it's inaccessible to the point of being unusable, there is nothing the browser can do. Maybe as a developer I can userscript it into compliance, or maybe I can just go to one of your competitors who either have an accessibility-first culture or have stumbled on accessibility by accident (I don't really care which). And maybe all the other blind people out there who don't know how to write JavaScript can learn it so they can make your website work for them. It's just as easy as learning how to say "Add to Cart" in Spanish, right? The other day I had to use the browser console just to check out on Lenovo's website, for crying out loud. Lenovo. Come on.

> Chrome can translate many websites while keeping their functionality intact, to the point where for many tasks, understanding the local language of that website is not a requirement.

And that feature works better if the site follows accessibility best practices! So you might as well not put text in images, avoid overly-elaborate JavaScript, and so on; it'll help foreign language speakers as well as people with visual impairments.

Erm English is a fluent second / third language to many Kenyans. Or do you mean something else?

Anyway, I just picked Kenya randomly. I could have also stuck to English-speaking countries like NZ / Aus / Uk.

People can learn other languages. Disabled people cant get rid of their disabilities.

It's better for everyone for them to become fluent in English. People with blindness aren't refusing to become fluent in sight.

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