Comment by rickydroll | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rickydroll | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Many moons ago, I attended a demo of a new software product, and without disclosing my disability to the vendor, I inquired about its accessibility features. They said that they don't do anything for the disabled because it's such a small market, and it wasn't profitable to accommodate the needs of disabled users.

I found myself irrationally enraged and had to walk away from the conversation. I thought about it when I calmed down and I realized I was feeling, "Who the fuck are you to tell me how I can live in the world?"

Dissecting these thoughts further led me to the understanding that, without accessibility, you are telling a class of people that they don't deserve access to education, government services, or commercial products.

Telling disabled people that they don't deserve access to any benefits of a civilized society is a long-standing and persistent attitude. It's roughly analogous to denying poor people health care, food, and basic shelter because all they deserve is what scraps we are willing to bestow on them.

You seem to have the opposite perspective on the relationship between someone who makes a product and customers...

I am never looking at one specific person or group when planning what to invest time in, I'm looking for the best return.

Its not a fair start point to claim I'm thinking on the level of who deserves access. Usually I'm following my own plans to try to break even.

Generally, designing with accessibility in mind improves the product for everyone and adds a little to the cost. Retrofitting accessibility produces an expensive dog's breakfast of a product.

In other words, if you don't design to include, you are planning to exclude.

Unfortunately I simply don't agree that it's a better product for everyone, for a few reasons, but the most simple is because there are costs involved.

A hypothetical zero additional effort inclusion at design stage, still wouldn't remove the issue where I now have an additional requirement limiting how I can approach things. I might also end up with higher overhead to modify a system as change requests come.

This is time and money I have to spend not working on the rest of the product.

Then you get into deeper issues, where if you actually have accessibility as a first class goal, much of your design should change. Consider an ideal UI for attracting new unguided users vs one with the expectation that users will have training and become experts. Then add in design for specific impairments. It's not easy and should be a big driver of the overall design, usually only done if the customer explicitly has a reason for it.

Again, it's not about deliberate exclusion; it's that I am trying to spend my energy in a way that gives me the most financial benefit (the selfish reasons as per the article), and accessibility does not do that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com