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> 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 t

> 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.
  - extra88 10y ago
    Thanks for the link, I like learning about solutions to accessibility problems using tools that weren't specifically designed for that purpose. I think it's actually better for each site to not try to bake this in because each one will do things differently and take some of the control out of the individual's hands. I think it's better for them to code to web standards so each individual's tools can work with them; e.g. instead of writing a <div> with a click event that opens a URL, just use <a href>. That's a somewhat contrived example but using a <div> with a click event where they should use a <button> is very common. You use a Mac, right? Do you not use Dragon for Mac for voice dictation? They do have web extensions for Safari and Firefox (not Chrome, only Dragon NaturallySpeaking for PC has a Chrome extension). http://www.nuance.com/dragon/extensions5/index.htm http://www.nuance.com/dragon/extensions5/index.htm
    - escapologybb 10y ago
      You make some excellent points and after thinking about some more I think one of the most difficult things to do is explore a website, yes I could tab through every link when a webpage has been coded to proper standards but if there was some way for me to explore our website without having to do that, that would be awesome. Yes, that was just one example of what it could do. The whole extension was a number of things and I was talking about the suite of tools being something that you could maybe toggle on and off in the browser. For instance pressing the letter F brings up a load of boxes with numbers in and when you type in those numbers you follow the URL, but if you press the letter C and then type a number that comes up it copies the URL of the page you are onto the clipboard. I'm not all web developer so I don't know how feasible this would be, but if I could flick on that extensions functionality in any browser that would be awesome. If you're watching Vimium person, thanks! Yes I am on a Mac and I have tried the extensions in Dragon 5 and they are absolutely abysmal, they don't work most of the time and caused my browser to crash. In fact DragonDictate 5 was so bad that I've downgraded back to version 4, the recognition accuracy went through the floor, the ability to manipulate custom commands was changed beyond recognition to the point of uselessness, it was unstable and crashed all the time and was generally terrible. Really weird, as version 4 is a solid as a rock and has been since the day I bought it. Which is why I tried version 5 on a Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, iMac, different MacBook Pro and a number of different versions of OS X all with the same terrible result. Must've been a Friday.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
daenney 10y ago
> 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. Perhaps your could be of help by providing some guidance in the area? I can certainly understand the frustration but without further information on what to do, not to do, material to read up on and what not it's going to be hard to get anything done. Not everyone has Apple's resources or even their understanding of what disability means, which forms it can take and how that affects the usability of their products.
- escapologybb 10y ago
  I'm totally with you, there just isn't a way for your average developer to access information about quadriplegics and how they might go about using the Internet. The infrastructure just isn't there and I think until it is we are reliant upon personal relationships, by that I mean "I worked with this quadriplegic guy once who was a geek and he gave me some useful feedback on what we were doing". Sadly that really is the state of affairs at the moment as I see it. Coincidently it was word-of-mouth that got me involved in the Apple beta test program, so even they are relying on a word-of-mouth network to a point. Now I understand that the quadriplegic/geek crossover may be a small one but we are large enough market to be worth catering to, as we also have money that we are willing to exchange for goods and services. :-) However there is just no way for me to give large companies advice, or even small ones for that matter. Everybody makes sure their website or product works with a screen reader and out the door it goes, why would you think about motor skills if you've never had to before and you don't know anybody who is quadriplegic and you've got so much else to do and your boss is on at you to do some testing about something else and on and on it goes. I can totally understand why the development hasn't been done, I really can. Maybe someone wants to fund me to start up a quadriplegic Internet Users Information Widget Forum Type Thing™. You give me huge amounts of venture capital and I'll tell you my opinion on all things Internet, that sounds like a great swap! :-) In all seriousness the one piece of advice I would give you is to sit in front of your product whatever that might be, put your hands under your thighs and think to yourself "how am I going to accomplish this task?". Because over the past decade that's when I've had to do with each new piece of technology, and if you have another idea about how I can interact with companies please do let me know. Hope this long winded rant helps!
louprado 10y ago
Someone once mentioned the distinction isn't disabled vs abled; it is disabled vs temporarily-abled. Given enough time/age disability is inevitable. I have always felt private gratitude for a profession where the physical requirements are one good eye and one good finger. Reading the inspiring posts above, it appears I have set my physical requirements bar too high.
- escapologybb 10y ago
  You're absolutely right, old-age and infirmity will get is all in the end. It just so happens that disabled people are living in the future that the able-bodied will experience right now, the solutions we come to now and hopefully I can contribute to that will be the ones that you use when you get old. Hey, if you have a job that suits your physical ability and you enjoy it I think you should go for full on gratitude! :-)
EdSharkey 10y ago
I would love to know how page navigation should be optimized for a quadriplegic. Frankly, voice command seems to me like the ideal future web for extreme motor disabilities where the user can see and speak. Should website functionalities be exposed as Alexa Skills on Amazon's Echo product? Perhaps an Alexa two-way tie-in to the page you're currently viewing? Maybe metadata on that page could inform the Alexa Skill what controls are interactive on the page? Perhaps you should reach out to Amazon; their device feels a bit like a solution looking for a hard problem at this point.

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.
- extra88 10y ago
  Thanks for the link, I like learning about solutions to accessibility problems using tools that weren't specifically designed for that purpose. I think it's actually better for each site to not try to bake this in because each one will do things differently and take some of the control out of the individual's hands. I think it's better for them to code to web standards so each individual's tools can work with them; e.g. instead of writing a <div> with a click event that opens a URL, just use <a href>. That's a somewhat contrived example but using a <div> with a click event where they should use a <button> is very common. You use a Mac, right? Do you not use Dragon for Mac for voice dictation? They do have web extensions for Safari and Firefox (not Chrome, only Dragon NaturallySpeaking for PC has a Chrome extension). http://www.nuance.com/dragon/extensions5/index.htm http://www.nuance.com/dragon/extensions5/index.htm
  - escapologybb 10y ago
    You make some excellent points and after thinking about some more I think one of the most difficult things to do is explore a website, yes I could tab through every link when a webpage has been coded to proper standards but if there was some way for me to explore our website without having to do that, that would be awesome. Yes, that was just one example of what it could do. The whole extension was a number of things and I was talking about the suite of tools being something that you could maybe toggle on and off in the browser. For instance pressing the letter F brings up a load of boxes with numbers in and when you type in those numbers you follow the URL, but if you press the letter C and then type a number that comes up it copies the URL of the page you are onto the clipboard. I'm not all web developer so I don't know how feasible this would be, but if I could flick on that extensions functionality in any browser that would be awesome. If you're watching Vimium person, thanks! Yes I am on a Mac and I have tried the extensions in Dragon 5 and they are absolutely abysmal, they don't work most of the time and caused my browser to crash. In fact DragonDictate 5 was so bad that I've downgraded back to version 4, the recognition accuracy went through the floor, the ability to manipulate custom commands was changed beyond recognition to the point of uselessness, it was unstable and crashed all the time and was generally terrible. Really weird, as version 4 is a solid as a rock and has been since the day I bought it. Which is why I tried version 5 on a Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, iMac, different MacBook Pro and a number of different versions of OS X all with the same terrible result. Must've been a Friday.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

daenney 10y ago

> 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. Perhaps your could be of help by providing some guidance in the area? I can certainly understand the frustration but without further information on what to do, not to do, material to read up on and what not it's going to be hard to get anything done. Not everyone has Apple's resources or even their understanding of what disability means, which forms it can take and how that affects the usability of their products.

escapologybb 10y ago
I'm totally with you, there just isn't a way for your average developer to access information about quadriplegics and how they might go about using the Internet. The infrastructure just isn't there and I think until it is we are reliant upon personal relationships, by that I mean "I worked with this quadriplegic guy once who was a geek and he gave me some useful feedback on what we were doing". Sadly that really is the state of affairs at the moment as I see it. Coincidently it was word-of-mouth that got me involved in the Apple beta test program, so even they are relying on a word-of-mouth network to a point. Now I understand that the quadriplegic/geek crossover may be a small one but we are large enough market to be worth catering to, as we also have money that we are willing to exchange for goods and services. :-) However there is just no way for me to give large companies advice, or even small ones for that matter. Everybody makes sure their website or product works with a screen reader and out the door it goes, why would you think about motor skills if you've never had to before and you don't know anybody who is quadriplegic and you've got so much else to do and your boss is on at you to do some testing about something else and on and on it goes. I can totally understand why the development hasn't been done, I really can. Maybe someone wants to fund me to start up a quadriplegic Internet Users Information Widget Forum Type Thing™. You give me huge amounts of venture capital and I'll tell you my opinion on all things Internet, that sounds like a great swap! :-) In all seriousness the one piece of advice I would give you is to sit in front of your product whatever that might be, put your hands under your thighs and think to yourself "how am I going to accomplish this task?". Because over the past decade that's when I've had to do with each new piece of technology, and if you have another idea about how I can interact with companies please do let me know. Hope this long winded rant helps!

louprado 10y ago

Someone once mentioned the distinction isn't disabled vs abled; it is disabled vs temporarily-abled. Given enough time/age disability is inevitable. I have always felt private gratitude for a profession where the physical requirements are one good eye and one good finger. Reading the inspiring posts above, it appears I have set my physical requirements bar too high.

escapologybb 10y ago
You're absolutely right, old-age and infirmity will get is all in the end. It just so happens that disabled people are living in the future that the able-bodied will experience right now, the solutions we come to now and hopefully I can contribute to that will be the ones that you use when you get old. Hey, if you have a job that suits your physical ability and you enjoy it I think you should go for full on gratitude! :-)

EdSharkey 10y ago

I would love to know how page navigation should be optimized for a quadriplegic. Frankly, voice command seems to me like the ideal future web for extreme motor disabilities where the user can see and speak. Should website functionalities be exposed as Alexa Skills on Amazon's Echo product? Perhaps an Alexa two-way tie-in to the page you're currently viewing? Maybe metadata on that page could inform the Alexa Skill what controls are interactive on the page? Perhaps you should reach out to Amazon; their device feels a bit like a solution looking for a hard problem at this point.