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Comment by caaqil | Hacker News Reader

> By choosing Discord, you also lock out users with accessibility needs, for whom the proprietary Discord client is often a nightmare to use.

The author takes it for granted that accessibility issues are more prevalent in proprietary software like Discord (vs FOSS alternatives), is there any evidence to back this up? I ask because it seems counter-intuitive. Since most proprietary software in this space tend to have more users than their FOSS counterparts, it seems pretty straightforward to think that accessibility will be less of an issue in the former category (i.e., more users = taking into account and addressing more accessibility needs vs when you only have a few thousand users).

Maybe the logic is being open source encourages volunteers to address accessibility issues and submit patches? Although even that's debatable; unless the project is quite popular, there will always be shortage of volunteers.

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One very simple point is: Forbidding third-party clients puts you at the mercy of the main developers caring about accessibility, a small-but-caring group of outsiders can't fix it. Whereas if you have an ecosystem of clients in an open system, a) users have a choice of options and can pick the one that suits their workflows best and b) don't have to rely on the main devs to care to be able to tweak one for their needs.

EDIT: this also supports the "bridge everything to IRC/Matrix/..." approach, since it lets people use whatever setup they already have working for their specific needs. And if Discord kills our bridge one day because "evil bot", well, rest of the group still works. And if something new and shiny comes up, sure, bridge it.

I guess it's a dual-edged sword: From my experience, I agree with you that proprietary software is more likely to provide accessibility options (because they usually have more funding and, sometimes, legal obligation), but if they don't, you're out of luck and can't change the situation.

I mean, Discord have only recently committed to making it easier for blind people to use[1]. Their forums seem to have a lot of people complaining about accessibility issues too.

[1] https://www.lflegal.com/2021/10/discord-press/

Accessibility issues, user to user security and privacy issues, API design issues, developer relations issues...

Discord gets a lot of complaints but they seem focused on chasing their success metrics to the absolute exclusion of everything else. Those complaints don't register in their chosen and still upward trending metrics, therefore they don't matter. It doesn't matter that a significant part of Discord's growth is backed by users benefiting from bots which will be broken by the upcoming API changes, it doesn't matter that their developer relations are so bad that major developers are abandoning their projects instead of updating to the new API, all of this doesn't matter as it isn't being measured by their success metrics.

perfect example of foss accessibility issue: https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits

this dev refuse to consider accessibility as it means ui changes or new option. users with visual impair are unable to use app and dev just locks issue reported for it and ignores users. probably to boost number of dls/markerting.

even if user does a patch dev just closes and does his own thing that dont help. even foss projects kick contribs out for try to help

There are some multi-protocol clients that are accessible and if the server uses an accessible protocol, it makes it more accessible. Sometimes commercial services are accessible, sometimes they are not and it is hit or miss. The big ones make an effort to cover that part of the market, but it might take them time to fix a11y bugs when they introduce one in the rush for new features.

Your logic is extremely flawed, accessibility at many commercial companies takes a back seat because it is not viewed as something that will drive metrics or adoption. Dev Time will be spent on things that will drive new users, or improve profitability, Accessibility rares makes that cut.

I am not sure where you believe that more users == more time given to accessibility features.

Open Source on the other hand is development driven by need, thus if an an open source software does not do what I need, I can modify to do that thing. This allows a small niche of users to adapt the software to meet their particular accessibility needs, or for a charity to pay a developer to do so, neither of which is possible with close source software. So at the end of the day people that need or want accessibility features have to shame the closed source companies into doing it, or have regulations passed that require it, both of which will result in just enough development time to either cover the regulations, or the bad PR, and likely will result in a subpar experience to that of Open Source (IMO)

And yet iPhone is one of the best examples of accessible product. Can you provide any examples supporting your "IMO"?

The author is making a statement about Discord specifically, not proprietary software in general.

Sure but the argument seemed to be more general. From the article:

  Perceptive readers might have noticed that most of these 
  arguments can be generalized. This article is much the same 
  if we replace “Discord” with “GitHub”, for instance, or “ 
  Twitter” or “YouTube”.

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