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While I of course do not oppose accessibility or Electron per se I think this is bad advice. 0) All advice depends a lot on the product. Most general advice is

While I of course do not oppose accessibility or Electron per se I think this is bad advice. 0) All advice depends a lot on the product. Most general advice is just useless. 1) Preparing for potential changes in legislation is most of the time not a good idea. As you said you never know what is coming and so you should not try to prepare for everything. Also said games you mention could probably disable the chat if implementing accessibility features was to costly. Also these changes don't come over night. 2) I really dislike what people try to cramp into basic human rights.. Do you also expect this from open source software? Do you really think if people spend their free time they are obligated to implement accessibility or whatever else? In my opinion the user of open source is entitled too nothing. 3) Electron, is, not, fine, just, like, that. There are tons of Electron apps out there which have no right to carry hundreds of megabyte with them and consume that many resources. I am pro choosing whatever you want. But please don't advert Electron as "is-always-fine".. If you even want to force accessibility.. what about energy consumption?

miki123211 6y ago
> 2) I really dislike what people try to cramp into basic human rights.. Do you also expect this from open source software? Do you really think if people spend their free time they are obligated to implement accessibility or whatever else? In my opinion the user of open source is entitled too nothing. In my opinion, this depends whether the software in question improves the lives of its users or makes the lives of non-users worse. If it's just another media player we don't have to use, accessibility would be cool, but it's not really that important. If it's a chat solution for companies, accessibility is absolutely crucial, open-source or not. Not implementing accessibility means people could lose their jobs if their companies switch to it. Society would be better off if this software never existed in the first place.
- fileeditview 6y ago
  Would you really create an open-source chat software for companies? In any case.. if a company would adopt such a software and then fire people because the software is not accessible, then a lot is wrong but it is not that software. Protect employees' rights properly by all means but don't come up with stupid legislation that forces open-source software to do anything. This will just result in less open-source software or worse quality. Sometimes I wish we could disable all open-source software for a few days, so people would actually value what others do for free. It seems to me that these days a lot of people think the are entitled to all kinds of things.
  - miki123211 6y ago
    > Would you really create an open-source chat software for companies? Zulip? Jitsi Meet? Matrix and Element? Even GitLab falls into that category. Not strictly chat, but crucial company software nonetheless. > Protect employees' rights properly by all means but don't come up with stupid legislation that forces open-source software to do anything. This will just result in less open-source software or worse quality. So, in essence, forbid companies from using inaccessible software of that kind? That's pretty close to what I'm proposing, instead of banning the creation of that software, ban it's use, which, ultimately, comes down to the same thing. Also whether software is open source, freeware or for-pay does not matter in this discussion. > Sometimes I wish we could disable all open-source software for a few days, so people would actually value what others do for free. It seems to me that these days a lot of people think the are entitled to all kinds of things. Doing the work for free doesn't justify doing work that harms the society. If I gave out poisoned food for free, I would still be as liable as if I sold it. Sure, it means there is less free food given out, but ultimately, it's a net gain.
    - bscphil 6y ago
      > If I gave out poisoned food for free, I would still be as liable as if I sold it. Sure, it means there is less free food given out, but ultimately, it's a net gain. Non-accessible open source software is more like running a food stand at which you give out free food, but the food contains peanuts, which is clearly stated on your sign. "contains peanuts" ≠ "poisoned".
    - fileeditview 6y ago
      > Zulip? Jitsi Meet? Matrix and Element? Even GitLab falls into that category. Not strictly chat, but crucial company software nonetheless. Gitlab is not a chat software.. however my introductory sentence wasn't really important so maybe I just should have skipped it. > So, in essence, forbid companies from using inaccessible software of that kind? That's pretty close to what I'm proposing, instead of banning the creation of that software, ban it's use, which, ultimately, comes down to the same thing. No I don't say you should forbid companies from using whatever software. I said protect the employees. Which in this case means that a company should not be able to fire a person that cannot use a software the company introduced. Besides that it is not even the same thing because not only companies use open-source software. > Also whether software is open source, freeware or for-pay does not matter in this discussion. It matters A LOT. Forcing your expectations of what is right on people that create things and give them away for free is entitled. If you want to sell something this is completely another story. > Doing the work for free doesn't justify doing work that harms the society. > If I gave out poisoned food for free, I would still be as liable as if I sold it. Sure, it means there is less free food given out, but ultimately, it's a net gain. Both of these statements are utterly ridiculous. Harming society with a (free) software that is not accessible? Comparing poisoned food with open-source software... I don't even know what to say about this. I will drop out of the discussion. Good luck on the accessibility crusade.
schwartzworld 6y ago
The thing about accessibility is it's only hard if you wait until the end to do it. There's an ongoing conversation in the web development world about this now. if you build your UI out of accessible elements, or better yet semantic HTML elements then your site will be accessible by default. All it takes is keeping this in mind to begin with, because it's no harder to do it accessible than not. You might miss or be unaware of accessibility concerns when developing, but it's easier to go back and fix what you missed than it is to build an entire ui and go back and add accessibility to begin with. As to electron, if you want to leverage web skills to build a mobile app, it's a cromulent solution. I don't think big companies with resources should use it (slack), but for JS devs who want to build things, it's a great tool. Most people I work with don't realize slack and vscode are both electron apps.
cratermoon 6y ago
As someone with presbyopia, and light myopia that first developed around the time I hit 30, who used to have excellent vision, I promise you that sooner or later you'll regret not thinking about accessibility. For the record, the default choices for text size here on Hacker News are an example of ignoring basic accessibility.
- kyleee 6y ago
  There are myriad ways to increase the font size of a simple site like HN (browser settings, OS level, etc). Is this really a problem? If one was required to achieve 100% consensus on default font size, nobody would ever get anything done.
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    G178: Providing controls on the Web page that allow users to incrementally change the size of all text on the page up to 200 percent: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/G178.html https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/G178.html
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  You can change the text size on Hacker News, or any other site, without really affecting everyone else though. Ctrl+Wheel is a common way. Personally i have strong myopia yet i heavily dislike how large fonts are everywhere and i prefer Hacker News' font size.
  - Can_Not 6y ago
    Zooming!=change font size
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    > You can change the text size on Hacker News This I know. However, better-designed sites allow the user to customize the default font size.
- cratermoon 6y ago

miki123211 6y ago

> 2) I really dislike what people try to cramp into basic human rights.. Do you also expect this from open source software? Do you really think if people spend their free time they are obligated to implement accessibility or whatever else? In my opinion the user of open source is entitled too nothing. In my opinion, this depends whether the software in question improves the lives of its users or makes the lives of non-users worse. If it's just another media player we don't have to use, accessibility would be cool, but it's not really that important. If it's a chat solution for companies, accessibility is absolutely crucial, open-source or not. Not implementing accessibility means people could lose their jobs if their companies switch to it. Society would be better off if this software never existed in the first place.

fileeditview 6y ago
Would you really create an open-source chat software for companies? In any case.. if a company would adopt such a software and then fire people because the software is not accessible, then a lot is wrong but it is not that software. Protect employees' rights properly by all means but don't come up with stupid legislation that forces open-source software to do anything. This will just result in less open-source software or worse quality. Sometimes I wish we could disable all open-source software for a few days, so people would actually value what others do for free. It seems to me that these days a lot of people think the are entitled to all kinds of things.
- miki123211 6y ago
  > Would you really create an open-source chat software for companies? Zulip? Jitsi Meet? Matrix and Element? Even GitLab falls into that category. Not strictly chat, but crucial company software nonetheless. > Protect employees' rights properly by all means but don't come up with stupid legislation that forces open-source software to do anything. This will just result in less open-source software or worse quality. So, in essence, forbid companies from using inaccessible software of that kind? That's pretty close to what I'm proposing, instead of banning the creation of that software, ban it's use, which, ultimately, comes down to the same thing. Also whether software is open source, freeware or for-pay does not matter in this discussion. > Sometimes I wish we could disable all open-source software for a few days, so people would actually value what others do for free. It seems to me that these days a lot of people think the are entitled to all kinds of things. Doing the work for free doesn't justify doing work that harms the society. If I gave out poisoned food for free, I would still be as liable as if I sold it. Sure, it means there is less free food given out, but ultimately, it's a net gain.
  - bscphil 6y ago
    > If I gave out poisoned food for free, I would still be as liable as if I sold it. Sure, it means there is less free food given out, but ultimately, it's a net gain. Non-accessible open source software is more like running a food stand at which you give out free food, but the food contains peanuts, which is clearly stated on your sign. "contains peanuts" ≠ "poisoned".
  - fileeditview 6y ago
    > Zulip? Jitsi Meet? Matrix and Element? Even GitLab falls into that category. Not strictly chat, but crucial company software nonetheless. Gitlab is not a chat software.. however my introductory sentence wasn't really important so maybe I just should have skipped it. > So, in essence, forbid companies from using inaccessible software of that kind? That's pretty close to what I'm proposing, instead of banning the creation of that software, ban it's use, which, ultimately, comes down to the same thing. No I don't say you should forbid companies from using whatever software. I said protect the employees. Which in this case means that a company should not be able to fire a person that cannot use a software the company introduced. Besides that it is not even the same thing because not only companies use open-source software. > Also whether software is open source, freeware or for-pay does not matter in this discussion. It matters A LOT. Forcing your expectations of what is right on people that create things and give them away for free is entitled. If you want to sell something this is completely another story. > Doing the work for free doesn't justify doing work that harms the society. > If I gave out poisoned food for free, I would still be as liable as if I sold it. Sure, it means there is less free food given out, but ultimately, it's a net gain. Both of these statements are utterly ridiculous. Harming society with a (free) software that is not accessible? Comparing poisoned food with open-source software... I don't even know what to say about this. I will drop out of the discussion. Good luck on the accessibility crusade.

schwartzworld 6y ago

The thing about accessibility is it's only hard if you wait until the end to do it. There's an ongoing conversation in the web development world about this now. if you build your UI out of accessible elements, or better yet semantic HTML elements then your site will be accessible by default. All it takes is keeping this in mind to begin with, because it's no harder to do it accessible than not. You might miss or be unaware of accessibility concerns when developing, but it's easier to go back and fix what you missed than it is to build an entire ui and go back and add accessibility to begin with. As to electron, if you want to leverage web skills to build a mobile app, it's a cromulent solution. I don't think big companies with resources should use it (slack), but for JS devs who want to build things, it's a great tool. Most people I work with don't realize slack and vscode are both electron apps.

cratermoon 6y ago

As someone with presbyopia, and light myopia that first developed around the time I hit 30, who used to have excellent vision, I promise you that sooner or later you'll regret not thinking about accessibility. For the record, the default choices for text size here on Hacker News are an example of ignoring basic accessibility.

kyleee 6y ago
There are myriad ways to increase the font size of a simple site like HN (browser settings, OS level, etc). Is this really a problem? If one was required to achieve 100% consensus on default font size, nobody would ever get anything done.
- cratermoon 6y ago
  G178: Providing controls on the Web page that allow users to incrementally change the size of all text on the page up to 200 percent: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/G178.html https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/G178.html
badsectoracula 6y ago
You can change the text size on Hacker News, or any other site, without really affecting everyone else though. Ctrl+Wheel is a common way. Personally i have strong myopia yet i heavily dislike how large fonts are everywhere and i prefer Hacker News' font size.
- Can_Not 6y ago
  Zooming!=change font size
- cratermoon 6y ago
  > You can change the text size on Hacker News This I know. However, better-designed sites allow the user to customize the default font size.
cratermoon 6y ago