5 ms·

HTML already isn't meaningfully accessible. Gemini will still be an upgrade, because there's much less to spam screenreaders with, by virtue of being effectivel

by caslon 6y ago

HTML already isn't meaningfully accessible. Gemini will still be an upgrade, because there's much less to spam screenreaders with, by virtue of being effectively just a hyperlinked document layer. I think accessibility is critically-important, too, but acting like it's something required for success (however you define success) is denying the existence of the platform Gemini's already trying to supplant.

saagarjha 6y ago
Plain HTML is fairly accessible, I’m not sure what you mean?
- caslon 6y ago
  Plain HTML has a million attributes, isn't actually what any website is made of (this one even has spacer gifs), and isn't actually used in a semantic fashion by anyone (find me a page using <summary> and I'll show you a page that was sued into using it). Gemini has two elements (link, text), and is much more accessible. I love HTML, and I write my own sites to be accessible. I've used a screenreader, though, and can definitively say: every bit of computing sucks for the blind.
- shakna 6y ago
  Because of the highly nested structure of HTML, it is possible to crash (from experience, with all the big names) your screenreader if there are a large number of elements, especially if there are a large number of sub-trees, like you often find in technical documentation. HTML is accessible in theory... But in the real world, it can still be a terrible experience, unless the reader is highly optimised for streaming the HTML (not always possible), or the document is simple.
kevingadd 6y ago
"As of 2012, 4.2 million Americans aged 40 years and older suffer from uncorrectable vision impairment, out of which 1.02 million who are blind; this number is predicted to more than double by 2050 to 8.96 million due to the increasing epidemics of diabetes and other chronic diseases and our rapidly aging U.S. population." "Approximately 6.8% of children younger than 18 years in the United States have a diagnosed eye and vision condition. Nearly 3 percent of children younger than 18 years are blind or visually impaired, defined as having trouble seeing even when wearing glasses or contact lenses." Any definition of success that intentionally excludes tens of millions of users (even people who aren't completely blind may need the aid of a screen-reader) is a very questionable definition.
- caslon 6y ago
  The Web already does that. So does...all of computing! Hacker News is an English site. Billions of people do not speak English! Hacker News, therefore, has not succeeded in its goal to...be a place for sparking intellectual curiosity in English-speaking populations? Anything is discriminatory somehow, and "We have basically a plain-text format with links" is millions of miles more accessible than HTML, computers in general, and pretty much everything in the world.
  - bordercases 6y ago
    English can be trained, biological degradation of most sorts is amendable through technology.

by caslon 6y ago

saagarjha 6y ago

Plain HTML is fairly accessible, I’m not sure what you mean?

caslon 6y ago
Plain HTML has a million attributes, isn't actually what any website is made of (this one even has spacer gifs), and isn't actually used in a semantic fashion by anyone (find me a page using <summary> and I'll show you a page that was sued into using it). Gemini has two elements (link, text), and is much more accessible. I love HTML, and I write my own sites to be accessible. I've used a screenreader, though, and can definitively say: every bit of computing sucks for the blind.
shakna 6y ago
Because of the highly nested structure of HTML, it is possible to crash (from experience, with all the big names) your screenreader if there are a large number of elements, especially if there are a large number of sub-trees, like you often find in technical documentation. HTML is accessible in theory... But in the real world, it can still be a terrible experience, unless the reader is highly optimised for streaming the HTML (not always possible), or the document is simple.

kevingadd 6y ago

"As of 2012, 4.2 million Americans aged 40 years and older suffer from uncorrectable vision impairment, out of which 1.02 million who are blind; this number is predicted to more than double by 2050 to 8.96 million due to the increasing epidemics of diabetes and other chronic diseases and our rapidly aging U.S. population." "Approximately 6.8% of children younger than 18 years in the United States have a diagnosed eye and vision condition. Nearly 3 percent of children younger than 18 years are blind or visually impaired, defined as having trouble seeing even when wearing glasses or contact lenses." Any definition of success that intentionally excludes tens of millions of users (even people who aren't completely blind may need the aid of a screen-reader) is a very questionable definition.

caslon 6y ago
The Web already does that. So does...all of computing! Hacker News is an English site. Billions of people do not speak English! Hacker News, therefore, has not succeeded in its goal to...be a place for sparking intellectual curiosity in English-speaking populations? Anything is discriminatory somehow, and "We have basically a plain-text format with links" is millions of miles more accessible than HTML, computers in general, and pretty much everything in the world.
- bordercases 6y ago
  English can be trained, biological degradation of most sorts is amendable through technology.