Comment by npsimons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by npsimons | Hacker News Reader

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One thing that always surprises me is how many people take offense to the suggestion to make their software/websites more accessible, as if it's trampling on their artistic freedom. Even here on enlightened HN, the top-most comment seems to worry about some "Orwellian" future where non-accessible websites are verboten.

I prefer to look at making things accessible in two more positive ways:

1. It's a challenge; any designer can slap together a slick looking website. It takes thought and creativity (and research) to make an interface that is inherently flexible and usable by just about anyone.

2. Sure, you might scoff at the market possibilities today (seven percent? who cares!). But as life expectancy goes up, so do the numbers with disability, and the longer someone is alive, the more money they are likely to have. Reap those baby boomers! (cynical, yes; but this is business after all).

There are not enough upvotes in the world for this comment :)

> It takes thought and creativity (and research)

And money. Lots and lots of money. Sometimes, especially with single-page sites, it can take more than 100% of the base budget to implement the progressive enhancement necessary for screen readers and the like.

Customers don't want to pay for it, and I'm not going to do it for free.

Your point in 2 needs to be backed up by some numbers. You can't appeal to someone's internal economist without some statistics.

If your HTML is valid, and you're not doing crazy stuff with your headers, chances are the screen reader is going to do just fine.

I worked for the government, and every single site we put out had to be 508 compliant (in other words, accessible). It never doubled our budget, ever, and we had some pretty complex interfaces.

As for point two, go check out how many Baby Boomers are alive today. Then, remember this:

Baby boomers control over 80% of personal financial assets and more than half of all consumer spending.

They're also going to start needing sites that deal with their aging eyes, poor vision, and joint issues.

If most of your site is rendered with JavaScript and most of your content is delivered via JSON, you're kind of screwed.

> It takes thought and creativity (and research) to make an interface that is inherently flexible and usable by just about anyone

By and large all you have to do is do things the easy, straightforward, normal, recommended way. People put a lot of thought, creativity and money into making things unusable.

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