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Comment by SamBorick | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing how many people in this thread are seriously suggesting that these a11y features are not important. Do HN readers not understand that someday they will grow old, and their eyesight will fail, and they will find themselves increasing the font size on their devices?

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I used to bring up accessibility concerns quite a lot on HN. I have stopped however, because it is always the same story. It doesn't seem to matter how nice I am about it, or how accommodating I am towards people just hacking. I never want to stop people's creative spirit. Ever. But I'm one of those people who uses a screen reader. If your app does not work with them, it will not work for me. The amount of weirdly hostile responses I get really puts me off commenting here, so I just don't do it anymore. That doesn't make the issue go away, but it also just does not help. This isn't entirely unique to HN. It is very easy to dismiss accessibility concerns if you're not affected by them, or don't have anyone close that is. I try not to take it personally, but when many people chime in with comments like it's OK that you can't use this app, you're a minority, your burdens aren't anybody elses, and don't listen to them and go make a cool thing without regard, (not an exaggeration it's all in my comment history) it's a bit hard not to be put off by it. If I was able to change one or two minds with my little comments, then I'm very happy about that because maybe it means I get to use your next cool app too. I'm just not going to look for it here, and if I find an accessibility flaw, HN will definitely not be where I comment about it. I've gotten some genuinely good responses too. Some of you also tried to defend my point of view. Like Sam. And I'm very grateful for that. Sadly it's the same fight every single time, and I'm a little bit exhausted by it.

This is what gets me -- almost everyone who reaches old age will eventually be disabled. Some folks just get there faster.

> Some folks just get there faster.

From my observation, most folks get there temporarily or faster in their own specific way.

I have friends who lost their hearing early for a variety of reasons.

There are lots of ways to have imperfect eyesight, or lose it temporarily. You can lose your glasses or not be able to wear contact lenses for a while.

Lots of folks with laser surgery eventually regress. Also the surgery itself has visual side-effects.

Look, accessibility* is great and important to many people, and if you can afford to prioritize it early on in your product development, that's great - but it is not productive to treat commercial products like critical infrastructure, ignore the costs of implementing accessibility features (common tooling and standardization make it much easier, thankfully), and exaggerate the benefits.

The article starts off with the over-cited and misunderstood 1/6 figure, which comes from the WHO's claim that 1/6 of the world suffers from a "significant disability". I couldn't find a breakdown of what the WHO considers a significant disability in the first place, but the CDC in the US lists the following six disability categories in one of its studies: hearing, vision, cognitive, mobility, self-care, and independent living. How many of these are actually relevant in software? I have never once heard calls to make software more accessible to people with cognitive disabilities, and mobility/self-care/independent living categories are simply irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of software use cases. So no, you're not growing your audience by 1/6 by implementing screen-reader support for your website. If your product is growing, you're better off focusing on internationalization (which, technically, is a form of accessibility, but obviously not the subject of the article).

* Do we really need to abbreviate "accessibility" everywhere? It's just nine more characters than "a11y" and - speaking of accessibility - is more readable!

Disability accommodations tend to also strongly benefit everyone else. I know this isn't a code thing, but the most useful one I can think of is curb cuts.

All of this affects all of us.

There is also a code angle. You can automate around graphical programs easier thanks to accessibility APIs.

Speaking of curb cuts, recently in my town, they ripped up the sidewalks with already existing curb cuts, and added a new yellow pad with raised bumps in addition to new curbs (with the cuts). I was going to ask what this was for, but a quick search indicates that it is likely for blind users to feel the end of the sidewalk with a cane.

https://www.simplemost.com/sidewalk-bumps/?utm_partner=gray_...

Those also have good traction. On a winter morning before anyone gets around to shoveling, those pads might be the only good surfaces on my entire commute. The street corner where cars are turning is a pretty good spot not to be slipping.

Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. Thinking about accessibility is likely to positively impact your product or service's user experience. Not everyone has low/no vision or uses a switch device, but keeping those users in mind will allow abled folks to benefit from your design choices as well. Have you ever used a UI and complained that elements provide ideal contrast, or that you're able to use your keyboard for interactions?

I personally like closed captions and subtitles

(Though I don't understand the tech and how converting media frequently loses this)

> readers not understand that someday they will grow old, and their eyesight will fail, and they will find themselves increasing the font size on their devices?

let's reverse that, did you as a youth give much thought to what the olds went through on a daily? obviously, depending on age, the olds might not have been using computers to the extent we are today, but it still holds. the hubris of youth is part of growing up. until you personally experience something, it is hard to fully grok it. sure, we can know somethings without experience like not drinking bleach is a good idea. there are other things that are just so outside of the normal experience, it is hard to fathom. for a lighter example, have you ever tried walking in a pair of high heels even if not stilettos? it's painful, and i was on platform heels. i would fall down in 3 seconds flat with stilettos. after several hours, i was complaining about my feet hurting in the shoes. so after walking a mile in another person's shoes, I will never be frustrated if someone in my group needs a break from their shoes during a long night out ever again.

Its not that they arent important when looked at by itself, but it just isnt as important as other things. Nobody cares if a car has poor ui if it doesnt actually work. Get it to run first, then make the ui nice. IIRC theres a phrase for this: make it work, make it right, make it fast.

Except you're not getting it to run first any more than the restaurant that opens with a "no blacks" sign got it to run first for whites. You're discriminating, excluding people based on things they have no control over because you couldn't get over your own self absorbed privilege not unlike operators of diners or busses or taxis in the US South 65 years ago.

No, they don't understand. This isn't a forum of hackers any more, it's a forum of get rich quick capitalists trying to make bank on the latest popular trade. Accessibility is for losers, that's how sociopaths operate and Silicon Valley is a nest of them.

Almost nobody is suggesting this and you can reply to whoever you think is wrong about something. It says 'sneer' in this thing but those are the values of 'sneer' that include 'harangue':

Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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