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Comment by gostsamo | Hacker News Reader

VSCode is still on the top of accessibility, so when you can claim that you work perfectly with a screen reader, you will convince me to switch.

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Emacs

people often overlook accessibility and other essential features of a modern editor, you telling me that your rudimentary rust editor is faster than vscode? and? people don't use it because it's fast (it's not).

How is accessibility an essential feature? I'm not disabled, so I don't care if editor is accessible or not. I care about my use-cases. And I use vscode precisely because it's crazy fast.

You're not disabled yet. But you may want to care about this before your eyesight, motor accuracy, etc. start failing. It's not some big "disabled/not" switch - setting the font 1pt higher is accessibility, changing the colours is accessibility, being able to tab through fields consistently is accessibility, etc.

The idea that I might eventually become disabled still doesn't make it an essential feature. Disabled users are not a significant portion of the userbase of most software. Accessibility is an essential feature for a text editor in the same way that Linux support is an essential feature for Fortnite.

> Disabled users are not a significant portion of the userbase of most software.

Have I got news for you. https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/statistics/

> Currently, around 10% of the world's population, or roughly 650 million people, live with a disability.

> In countries with life expectancies over 70 years of age, people spend on average about 8 years, or 11.5 percent of their life span, living with disabilities.

Sure, not all of the disabilities will apply to using an editor. But disabilities overall are very common. A significant proportion of users of anything are disabled in some way - it just may not be obviously visible.

100% of people lose visual acuity.

Flat out you will eventually need glasses and your ability to see differentiate two different colors with a low contrast difference will fall apart.

This is why we have laws protecting disabled people from being ignored by markets. And even in the absence of the law (which may impact your software, talk to your lawyer about the ADA) there's such a thing called morality.

and yet, wacom pens are not supported. I need it to help with RSI

Fast search shows Vacom to be a proprietary platform on tablets. Not sure how easy it is it to port an app for it, but I might be able to put you on touch with the accessibility product manager of VSCode.

Do you have a preferred com channel?

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