A11y Is Not Accessible
mobilea11y.com
mobilea11y.com
The article you are commenting makes this point quite eloquently, so I'm not sure why you think this would be an unpopular opinion?
> [...] By being less accessible, the word a11y denotes a more technical approach to accessibility, not necessarily from those who use accessibility tools, but those who create them.
> That’s why I choose to use the word a11y here, and why I choose the hashtag #a11y on social media. And I’d recommend you do the same to avoid creating noise for people looking to improve their personal accessible experience.
So for general use, I recommend against using a11y, yet I’ve named this site with this acronym. There are a few reasons I made this decision. Firstly, WCAG 3.1.1 does permit domain-specific jargon so long as it we define it. So, take this post as a definition. Additionally, I expect most people who have found this site will have found it because they are specifically looking for something accessibility related.
A11y and WCAG around frontend web developers is usually fine but risky elsewhere, the same way "MVP" is fine in general HackerNews posts but not elsewhere.
Even "accessibility" is jargon and a lot of people outside of tech won't know what it means or what a screen reader is.
I don't think a11y and i18n are an attempt to be clever, they're just really long words to type correctly and take up space so they get shortened, like in Git commits and pull request discussions.
Edit: ah it's the number of letters in-between.
You are disputing the article with "because it's stupid". Do you have a better reason?
Personally a lot of this a11y stuff is complicated and confusing to me. I am trying my best to be a responsible dev, but it feels overwhelming sometimes.
I quite dislike this post because my impression is that it just boils down to "no option is adequate to me, and I'm unwilling to present an alternative".
Well, it's a blog about software accessibility...
If you just go down the checklist and do what you can, you'll be way ahead of most websites: https://webaim.org/standards/wcag/checklist
Microsoft also has a great interactive test that can probe your website for you and highlight issues: https://accessibilityinsights.io/
I think similar but less powerful checks are also built into some IDEs (Jetbrains) and linters (Eslint).
Edit: I am a sighted user with color vision. I can't promise these fixes are enough to make your site super accessible, but it's a lot better than nothing!
"a11y might be confusing to people with autism" -- autistic people are extremely represented in tech. Of all the things autistic people struggle with, it's not technical jargon within their own industry.
But really, I wish we'd all just agree to stop with this kind of abbreviating. It's impossible to decipher what it means on its face. You have to memorize it.
> Some people with disabilities such as autism can struggle to understand non-literal language.
Your paraphrase:
> autistic people are extremely represented in tech.
You made a switch-a-roo. The author mentioned one group, and you took a subset of that group who don’t have the problem and conclude it’s not a problem.
I had never heard of a11y; I assumed it was some kind of gender identity.
And I’m not someone who needs accessibility features.
> Say you’re designing for someone with one arm. There are roughly 20,000 people in the US with one arm. But if you add up the numbers of people with one arm, people with a temporary wrist injury or a broken arm, and folks with one free hand in a specific circumstance (like new parents lugging a baby around), you’re at 20 million in the U.S. alone.
https://medium.com/microsoft-design/kill-your-personas-1c332...
What?
> We take the A and Y from the beginning and end of accessibility, and 11 for the number of letters in between. This abbreviation also creates a pleasing homophone for ‘ally.’
It took me way to long to figure out what this story is about and that it's not about feminism "allies" as men who align with feministic view are often called. It's all very confusing and the overtures on how clear it is feel out of touch with reality.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in full support of this. Of course I am, as it could happen to anyone with no fault of their ownm, to find themselves in a situation needing help.
A11y, really? This reeks of marketing. But we're talking about it, so it's effective.
Seems about as accessible as coloring the Save button bright red and the back button bright Green.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym
Please explain, l10nel m35si li5.
Wow, this works both as numeronym and 1337. And in both senses, I agree. Kudos!
It took me 2 pages of DDG to find that word by searching the acronym(?). Now I know it's an L and not an upper-case I.
That pairing is applicable to a great many things in this life.
It would also then be able to serve as an example for how to implement such augmentations on text-heavy websites.
Wiki calls it a "Numerical contractions" which is a type of "Numeronym".
So, basically a number of removed letters instead of an apostrophe.
if (condition); then 1; else 0;
condition ? 1 : 0
Shorthand is useful when taking notes or when working with limited space. In the context of discussing a11y, i18n, and l10n in online documentation, neither of these things are true.
> However, the first option imposes less cognitive load on the (code) reader.
Not in this trivial case; cognitive load here is dominated by effort to identify meaningful parts and reject the noise. It rings true in case of more complex conditionals and expressions, where it quickly gets hard to identify at first glance where the three parts start and end. However:
> The second option requires specific knowledge of the ternary operator, which a significant number of programmers are not familiar with.
Those programmers should then familiarize themselves with it. For those reading this comment right now, here's a primer:
condition ? if-true-expression : if-false-expression;
That's it. The more important insight is that the whole thing is an expression, which always has a value, unlike regular if/else construct. This of course matters only for languages which, for some incomprehensible reason, needlessly complicate things by having "statements" and "expressions" be distinct things.
Anyway.
The larger point is that ternary operator is both very useful and very basic part of programming. Refusing to use it when appropriate, on the basis of "think of the juniors" is like refusing to sell paints and paintbrushes because hey, some adults never advanced past crayons and are artistically still 2 year old. And sure, if it's only about your hobby, then you do you - but when you want to do it professionally, you have to respect the fact that programming is a profession - as in, you're expected to learn stuff.
> The syntax of the ternary operator also varies by programming language, whereas if-then-else is far more ubiquitous.
Nah, arguably it's the if/then/else syntax that differs more often between languages. Starting with "then" thing being nonexistent in most.
The extreme aversion to learning, bordering on antiintellectualism, that's plaguing this industry, is not helping in making better software. It's helping companies in solving problems by throwing large amounts of easily replaceable fresh juniors at them.
> The extreme aversion to learning, bordering on antiintellectualism, that's plaguing this industry, is not helping in making better software. It's helping companies in solving problems by throwing large amounts of easily replaceable fresh juniors at them.
I feel the same way about any business or tool that advertises itself as "write less code!". It's not the quantity of typing that is difficult about a programmer's job; it's the cognitive load and context that must be held at any given time. I'm always interested in tools that can help reduce cognitive load, but I am also fearful of leaky abstractions. If a tool wants to inject itself between myself and the machine, the abstraction better be flawless and rooted in first principles.
now, if you're being so plain as to obscure, instead of [say complex and precise word, then explain it in simple terms], then you're taking the piss.
Ironically, the jargon reduces "accessibility," but oh well.