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Sadly accessibility development has many roadblock on its path: - For-profit organizations have little incentives to develop accessible software or they have t

by yoz-y 9y ago

Sadly accessibility development has many roadblock on its path: - For-profit organizations have little incentives to develop accessible software or they have to make it prohibitively expensive - Open Source development is usually "itch my scratch"-driven (as the author points out) and the pool of people who are both motivated by their own plight and able to develop solutions for them are very few. I think this is the main reason why the best accessibility frameworks are made by companies that are already far away from their bottom line and can afford to do the work at their own expense.

MBCook 9y ago
Apple seems to do it because it's in their ethos. Jobs and Cooks have both said it matters to them. They aren't big in enterprise (or even education) so I don't think that argument fits. I think they just care. That may be a bit of my bias but I can't come up with a good business case for them. MS may or may not care, but accessibility is often a requirement for government contracts (or buisnesses who want government contracts) so it's a good sales feature for them, even if something if a checkbox feature. They work very hard at t too. But the end result is that both of them work really hard on accessibility and everyone benefits.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  Apple does it very well: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceover-163733668.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceov...
- yoz-y 9y ago
  Yes that is what I meant. Apple and MS are for-profit, but they have massive profits from something else and a huge safety net. This is opposed to a company that either makes accessible software specifically, or makes software that would benefit from being accessible (let's say an IDE such as IntelliJ). Apple (from what I have heard MS too) really does amazing work in accessibility but this would not be possible had they not had enough resources. I can understand why understaffed open source projects do not allocate more resources to accessibility.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    My point with MS is that they're not doing it out of the good of their hearts (for argument) and just spending their profits... they are REQUIRED to do it to be able to get many of their biggest contracts. They are doing it so they CAN sell.

by yoz-y 9y ago

MBCook 9y ago

Apple seems to do it because it's in their ethos. Jobs and Cooks have both said it matters to them. They aren't big in enterprise (or even education) so I don't think that argument fits. I think they just care. That may be a bit of my bias but I can't come up with a good business case for them. MS may or may not care, but accessibility is often a requirement for government contracts (or buisnesses who want government contracts) so it's a good sales feature for them, even if something if a checkbox feature. They work very hard at t too. But the end result is that both of them work really hard on accessibility and everyone benefits.

LeoNatan25 9y ago
Apple does it very well: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceover-163733668.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceov...
yoz-y 9y ago
Yes that is what I meant. Apple and MS are for-profit, but they have massive profits from something else and a huge safety net. This is opposed to a company that either makes accessible software specifically, or makes software that would benefit from being accessible (let's say an IDE such as IntelliJ). Apple (from what I have heard MS too) really does amazing work in accessibility but this would not be possible had they not had enough resources. I can understand why understaffed open source projects do not allocate more resources to accessibility.
- MBCook 9y ago
  My point with MS is that they're not doing it out of the good of their hearts (for argument) and just spending their profits... they are REQUIRED to do it to be able to get many of their biggest contracts. They are doing it so they CAN sell.