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Yes, I support an X% increase on my taxes to pay for wheelchair lifts on public buses. > Every time you make accessibility a design goal in a technology/produc

Yes, I support an X% increase on my taxes to pay for wheelchair lifts on public buses. > Every time you make accessibility a design goal in a technology/product/building/service, it makes the design/production more complicated than it otherwise would be. If your original design excludes a non-trivial amount of human beings then it's probably not a very good design. Of course context is necessary here, and I can't just throw a snarky one-liner at you. If you're building a puzzle game, then yeah, blind people might not be able to play it and that's okay. If you're making a signup form, then it is inexcusable to leave out folks using assistive technologies because it's "complicated."

IanCal 11y ago
This is why laws around disabled access usually have use the term "reasonable adjustments" or similar. It's worth pointing out that the UK law also covers a businesses website: http://www.out-law.com/page-330 http://www.out-law.com/page-330 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance
chrishynes 11y ago
Right, but there are also shades if grey... What if you're building a signup form _for_ a puzzle game, or a website about it?
- potatolicious 11y ago
  There are many tools around these shades of grey, not all of which requires onerous effort. For example, I make mobile apps for a living - and both Android and iOS provide many tools that automatically make apps compatible by default with things like braille keyboard and screen readers. But through apathy, carelessness, and bad design/engineering, many apps break this automatic compatibility they got for free. Ditto for the web - if you're building a website for a puzzle game you'll want at least some kind of reasonable fallback, so to a blind person the website would at least make some kind of comprehensible sense rather than merely be a black hole that eats their screen reader. There are definitely cases where product creators need to go out of their way for accessibility's sake, but throughout all of software the tools to ensure a rudimentary level of accessibility already exist and are low-effort.
CalRobert 11y ago
> Yes, I support an X% increase on my taxes to pay for wheelchair lifts on public buses. I agree. Considering we're happy to spend loads on the dangerous roads that often put people in wheelchairs, spending a much smaller amount to help people maimed on those roads seems only fair.

IanCal 11y ago

This is why laws around disabled access usually have use the term "reasonable adjustments" or similar. It's worth pointing out that the UK law also covers a businesses website: http://www.out-law.com/page-330 http://www.out-law.com/page-330 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance

chrishynes 11y ago

Right, but there are also shades if grey... What if you're building a signup form _for_ a puzzle game, or a website about it?

potatolicious 11y ago
There are many tools around these shades of grey, not all of which requires onerous effort. For example, I make mobile apps for a living - and both Android and iOS provide many tools that automatically make apps compatible by default with things like braille keyboard and screen readers. But through apathy, carelessness, and bad design/engineering, many apps break this automatic compatibility they got for free. Ditto for the web - if you're building a website for a puzzle game you'll want at least some kind of reasonable fallback, so to a blind person the website would at least make some kind of comprehensible sense rather than merely be a black hole that eats their screen reader. There are definitely cases where product creators need to go out of their way for accessibility's sake, but throughout all of software the tools to ensure a rudimentary level of accessibility already exist and are low-effort.

CalRobert 11y ago

> Yes, I support an X% increase on my taxes to pay for wheelchair lifts on public buses. I agree. Considering we're happy to spend loads on the dangerous roads that often put people in wheelchairs, spending a much smaller amount to help people maimed on those roads seems only fair.