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As a blind software developer, I'm kind of sad to see how much Matt is getting pissed on in this thread. It really didn't seem like he was all that inflamatory

As a blind software developer, I'm kind of sad to see how much Matt is getting pissed on in this thread. It really didn't seem like he was all that inflamatory, either. He just pointed out the accessibility challenges that I myself face every single day because, what, blindness isn't all that common? Great, so either kill me off[1] or give me enough UBI to not need a job, because there's really no other path for me and my uncommon condition other than, it seems, to constantly assert my existence. Should we make hammers accessible to the disarmed? Ugh, should I have to waste any more of my time because someone on the internet put up yet another straw man for me to knock down? Look, I'd get it if his initial message was like mine, and I fully expect and don't care that I'll get downvoted for this. And to be clear, this comment is more about the intolerance and dismissiveness I've seen in the replies of what appeared to be a fairly constructive piece of criticism of someone who does accessibility work professionally and gave out free advice. Hell, how often does a Show HN get pissed on because the design looks outdated, and that's just taken as par for the course? People criticized the Thoughter design a few days ago (I don't recall how it was spelled and don't want to look it up) and no one said "Damn, the guy made a product and all you can do is complain about how it looks?" Yet someone voices accessibility concerns and look what happens. I myself have held off on posting some Show HNs because I can't make a website look good. But someone makes a constructive comment about a thing not being accessible along with tips on what might fix it and it's like "OMG get teh blinds outa here!" And now we know why I don't even seek out tech work anymore. Queue up the "maybe you'd have better luck if you behaved better" comments. :) And to be more constructive, I am a bit worried about the "render everything to a canvas and call it progress" trends I've seen with Web Assembly lately. It isn't just this, but the projects to compile QT and other native GUIs to wasm. Do that and you lose access to the native OS accessibility layers these tools use. I've wondered if there might be a way to create parallel HTML versions of these same widgets so your GTK button might compile to a <button/> with GTK-like styling. But I don't know anyone working in that direction, and I'm not smart enough to pull it off myself. I'm just worried that one day we'll have a pile of thin clients all running in their own canvases. My girlfriend's law firm uses timekeeping software written in the 90s with a web interface. I imagine it's a GUI app running on some basement server with a VNC client in front of it. That's an outlyer, but wasm makes it likely that it won't be, and Matt's concerns as an accessibility professional are completely on-point. 1. To be clear, not a cry for help or anything, but it sort of blows my mind that on one hand people dismiss disabilities because they're not that common. On the other, a large subset of society expects us to try harder to compensate for that apathy. So you either do, and become exceptional, or you just give up to some degree or other and accept that you'll likely never have the nice salary and such. On the gripping hand, most of you are likely to have one of these "uncommon" disabilities when you age. Hope you enjoy whatever you do while you can do it. It's going to be fun learning how to keep coding in your 70s when half the tools you took for granted aren't accessible to the screen reader you use because your glasses no longer cut it. :) I don't expect folks to bow and scrape when a thing isn't accessible, but to shit on someone for politely pointing that out is quite an unfortunate reaction.

ralusek 8y ago
Make hammers inaccessible to the disarmed? A hammer is a tool for a function. It's not the materialization of privilege for the armed.
- ndarilek 8y ago
  Sure, but in the context of building a visual layout tool, for someone to say that it shouldn't or doesn't need to be accessible to a blind person because OMG, visual! completely misses the point that it can be, and that other tools before it are. To say "I didn't have time to focus on accessibility because I was struggling with the challenges of making a Java codebase run under wasm" is one thing, and a thing I myself can relate to, having banged my head on wasm's challenges myself. To say "there's just no way to make a visual layout tool accessible to folks who can't see, so I'll just throw up my hands and give up" is another entirely. And I don't think that's what OP is doing, but I do think it's what some in this comment thread are advocating, and that's what bugs me.
  - ndarilek 8y ago
    Also, on a note directly applicable to this example, if you think hammers are unusable by folks without arms, might I suggest the documentary Right Footed? I can't say whether or not she uses a hammer without arms, but she flies a plane and drives with her feet, so I can't imagine her not using a hammer if she didn't want to. It feels a bit inspiration-porny at times, and my girlfriend and I both cringed quite a bit while watching it, but I think it makes the point I'm trying to much better than I am. Please don't dismiss a challenge out of hand because you can't imagine in 15 seconds of thought how it might be overcome. "you" being a generic term applicable to anyone reading this, BTW.
    - ralusek 8y ago
      > a challenge _out of hand_ -_-
  - ralusek 8y ago
    Making something accessible for a group of people is an opportunity cost at every step in the process. For some reason you've determined that "making the Java codebase run under wasm" is an acceptable diversion from making it accessible, but what makes other decisions less so? For example, I haven't bothered supporting IE for many years, regardless of the fact that there are potential users that will be unable to use services because of it. Same thing with internationalization, there's an opportunity cost that has to be made. That doesn't mean don't make the decision to expand support, I'm just saying that it IS a decision and it DOES have a cost. If you don't perceive it that way, you have to accept that there is a near infinite number of accessibility measures to contend with. Maybe I add support for red green color blindness, and then discover there are other types. The package bundle is too large for users in countries with poor internet access, so you need to have a fallback that removes features, and dedicate some resources to minimizing the initial load time. Oh, the input configuration doesn't make sense for users who are unable to use keyboard and mouse, but use an alternative input mechanism, you have to change it to support that. Oh no, adding support to assist those users has made able users switch to the assisted input configuration, and given them a competitive advantage in your game. Every company cannot service every need. Those that service a need open potential to acquire the market. That may or may not be worth it or possible at any given point, and that's okay.

ralusek 8y ago

Make hammers inaccessible to the disarmed? A hammer is a tool for a function. It's not the materialization of privilege for the armed.

ndarilek 8y ago
Sure, but in the context of building a visual layout tool, for someone to say that it shouldn't or doesn't need to be accessible to a blind person because OMG, visual! completely misses the point that it can be, and that other tools before it are. To say "I didn't have time to focus on accessibility because I was struggling with the challenges of making a Java codebase run under wasm" is one thing, and a thing I myself can relate to, having banged my head on wasm's challenges myself. To say "there's just no way to make a visual layout tool accessible to folks who can't see, so I'll just throw up my hands and give up" is another entirely. And I don't think that's what OP is doing, but I do think it's what some in this comment thread are advocating, and that's what bugs me.
- ndarilek 8y ago
  Also, on a note directly applicable to this example, if you think hammers are unusable by folks without arms, might I suggest the documentary Right Footed? I can't say whether or not she uses a hammer without arms, but she flies a plane and drives with her feet, so I can't imagine her not using a hammer if she didn't want to. It feels a bit inspiration-porny at times, and my girlfriend and I both cringed quite a bit while watching it, but I think it makes the point I'm trying to much better than I am. Please don't dismiss a challenge out of hand because you can't imagine in 15 seconds of thought how it might be overcome. "you" being a generic term applicable to anyone reading this, BTW.
  - ralusek 8y ago
    > a challenge _out of hand_ -_-
- ralusek 8y ago
  Making something accessible for a group of people is an opportunity cost at every step in the process. For some reason you've determined that "making the Java codebase run under wasm" is an acceptable diversion from making it accessible, but what makes other decisions less so? For example, I haven't bothered supporting IE for many years, regardless of the fact that there are potential users that will be unable to use services because of it. Same thing with internationalization, there's an opportunity cost that has to be made. That doesn't mean don't make the decision to expand support, I'm just saying that it IS a decision and it DOES have a cost. If you don't perceive it that way, you have to accept that there is a near infinite number of accessibility measures to contend with. Maybe I add support for red green color blindness, and then discover there are other types. The package bundle is too large for users in countries with poor internet access, so you need to have a fallback that removes features, and dedicate some resources to minimizing the initial load time. Oh, the input configuration doesn't make sense for users who are unable to use keyboard and mouse, but use an alternative input mechanism, you have to change it to support that. Oh no, adding support to assist those users has made able users switch to the assisted input configuration, and given them a competitive advantage in your game. Every company cannot service every need. Those that service a need open potential to acquire the market. That may or may not be worth it or possible at any given point, and that's okay.