7 ms·

> Why would an employer post to a job board for people with disabilities in general, except out of a misguided sense of charity, or perhaps to meet some kind of

by daenney 10y ago

> Why would an employer post to a job board for people with disabilities in general, except out of a misguided sense of charity, or perhaps to meet some kind of quota? One of my employers purposefully went and hired a blind developer. Not because they felt charitable or because they had to fill some quota but because we needed to improve the accessibility of our web apps. But it took us nearly half a year just to find someone and then we still needed them to get through interviews. The process took over a year. Having that developer on the team proved tremendously effective in improving the accessibility for everyone, not just the vision impaired. Depending on what you do having someone on the team that actively works on this and understands these issues at a much deeper level can bring enormous benefit. It also ensured this wasn't a one off improvement. By continuously being involved they sensitised other developers to these issues.

escapologybb 10y ago
> One of my employers purposefully went and hired a blind developer. That was really great of them to hire a blind developer, what makes me mildly furious is that disabled in the tech world means blind or deaf, there isn't any room for people with extreme motor skill difficulties. A few people have suggested tools in this thread and they have all been for blind people and that is what "accessibility" has come to mean the technology space at the moment. Blind people definitely need to be catered to don't get me wrong, but how do you use the Internet if you can't use your arms? It just doesn't come up in web development courses, most software products don't think about it at all, we really are the redheaded stepchildren the accessibility world. It's only Apple in the past couple of years who came out with their suite of tools to allow quadriplegics and people with extreme motor difficulties to use iOS that have really thought about it, and they are really amazing. Full disclosure I helped beta test a couple of versions of iOS accessibility stuff, but there isn't another company in the world where you could take a laptop or phone out-of-the-box and within 5 minutes be up and running as a person with quadriplegia. And believe me I've looked! So developers, spare a thought for those of us who had to cobble together some Frankenstein approach to using the Internet just because we cannot use our hands! :-)
- extra88 10y ago
  I don't know if vision and hearing impairments are the only ones considered in all technology but certainly in web design vision is the main one considered. If a web site has been made accessible to someone who is blind and uses a screen reader, that includes making sure it's keyboard accessible. What are some examples of a site being keyboard accessible with a screen reader but not to you with the assistive technology you use?
  - extra88 10y ago
    To answer my own question, I just remembered two examples. First, "skip to main content" links that are always visually hidden, even when they have focus. Another is one I saw earlier this week, an accordion widget that that was totally keyboard accessible but had no visual indication of focus; fine if a screen reader is explaining everything, really hard to use if you're using your vision. I suppose a blanket issue is the lack of visual indication of focus, especially by overriding the browser's native styling of focused objects. Still, I'm always interested in other examples.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - fencepost 10y ago
      At a Meetup presentation last month we had someone on NPR's web team talking about a variety of things related to both usability and accessibility. One of the examples he had of a terrible accessibility item was an overlay (e.g. picture zoom, etc.) for which the "close" button was right there on screen - and at the very bottom of the page after dozens of links for a screen reader.
  - escapologybb 10y ago
    I think you make an excellent point in your other post, it's hard to tell when a website is keyboard accessible or not. I have no idea of the top of my head whether the New York Times, CNN or YouPorn* are navigable via the keyboard. Nobody advertises it and I didn't know that there was a crossover between screen readers and keyboard use, thanks for the info. Personally I solved the problem, well I looked in the chrome extension store and use an extension called Vimium[1]. Without that extension I would not be able to browse the Internet as quickly as I do, you simply learn a few keyboard shortcuts and when you press say the letter F it places little yellow boxes above every link with a number in each box. You type the numbers and follow the link, I do this by speaking the numbers out loud with my voice but people do in other ways too. One of the most useful and unintended accessibility products on the web, if this could be incorporated into every website then problem solved largely! [1]: https://vimium.github.io/ https://vimium.github.io/ * Obviously I've never visited this site, I've just heard other people talking about it.

by daenney 10y ago

escapologybb 10y ago

> One of my employers purposefully went and hired a blind developer. That was really great of them to hire a blind developer, what makes me mildly furious is that disabled in the tech world means blind or deaf, there isn't any room for people with extreme motor skill difficulties. A few people have suggested tools in this thread and they have all been for blind people and that is what "accessibility" has come to mean the technology space at the moment. Blind people definitely need to be catered to don't get me wrong, but how do you use the Internet if you can't use your arms? It just doesn't come up in web development courses, most software products don't think about it at all, we really are the redheaded stepchildren the accessibility world. It's only Apple in the past couple of years who came out with their suite of tools to allow quadriplegics and people with extreme motor difficulties to use iOS that have really thought about it, and they are really amazing. Full disclosure I helped beta test a couple of versions of iOS accessibility stuff, but there isn't another company in the world where you could take a laptop or phone out-of-the-box and within 5 minutes be up and running as a person with quadriplegia. And believe me I've looked! So developers, spare a thought for those of us who had to cobble together some Frankenstein approach to using the Internet just because we cannot use our hands! :-)

extra88 10y ago
I don't know if vision and hearing impairments are the only ones considered in all technology but certainly in web design vision is the main one considered. If a web site has been made accessible to someone who is blind and uses a screen reader, that includes making sure it's keyboard accessible. What are some examples of a site being keyboard accessible with a screen reader but not to you with the assistive technology you use?
- extra88 10y ago
  To answer my own question, I just remembered two examples. First, "skip to main content" links that are always visually hidden, even when they have focus. Another is one I saw earlier this week, an accordion widget that that was totally keyboard accessible but had no visual indication of focus; fine if a screen reader is explaining everything, really hard to use if you're using your vision. I suppose a blanket issue is the lack of visual indication of focus, especially by overriding the browser's native styling of focused objects. Still, I'm always interested in other examples.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - fencepost 10y ago
    At a Meetup presentation last month we had someone on NPR's web team talking about a variety of things related to both usability and accessibility. One of the examples he had of a terrible accessibility item was an overlay (e.g. picture zoom, etc.) for which the "close" button was right there on screen - and at the very bottom of the page after dozens of links for a screen reader.
- escapologybb 10y ago
  I think you make an excellent point in your other post, it's hard to tell when a website is keyboard accessible or not. I have no idea of the top of my head whether the New York Times, CNN or YouPorn* are navigable via the keyboard. Nobody advertises it and I didn't know that there was a crossover between screen readers and keyboard use, thanks for the info. Personally I solved the problem, well I looked in the chrome extension store and use an extension called Vimium[1]. Without that extension I would not be able to browse the Internet as quickly as I do, you simply learn a few keyboard shortcuts and when you press say the letter F it places little yellow boxes above every link with a number in each box. You type the numbers and follow the link, I do this by speaking the numbers out loud with my voice but people do in other ways too. One of the most useful and unintended accessibility products on the web, if this could be incorporated into every website then problem solved largely! [1]: https://vimium.github.io/ https://vimium.github.io/ * Obviously I've never visited this site, I've just heard other people talking about it.