7 ms·

is that any different from saying that installing wheelchair ramps in old buildings will be expensive and, in some cases, difficult?

macintux 6y ago
You can build a wheelchair ramp and perhaps it needs some new lumber occasionally but it's relatively easy to spot and fix problems. For a website, it could easily fall out of accessibility with an update to some library you rely on, and you wouldn't even know. To me, the difference is that software is never finished and behaves differently depending on who's using it on what OS and what web browser, and is thus that much harder to keep compliant.
- Tomte 6y ago
  That's only because there are no incentives to make libraries work (and keep working) wrt to accessibility. So the courts provide the incentives.
- Forge36 6y ago
  What if a business is in a city and the building is old? The number of stores downtown with a single step is surprisingly high. What are the rules on building the ramp on a public sidewalk? The roadblock isn't always maintenance, it's doing the work up front to avoid that step being a problem later.
  - macintux 6y ago
    There are definitely edge cases where a ramp can be harder to build than an accessible website is to maintain over the long run. I'm unconvinced that's more than a tiny fraction of the overall problem space.
- derekp7 6y ago
  If you are using automated testing then you need to make the site accessible to the test script. Which kind of makes it accessible to screen readers automatically.
- runarberg 6y ago
  I feel like this attitude undermines the fact that web development is an industry with skilled workers. A well crafted web site is accessible by default. A skilled web developer knows which parts can be problematic and deals with it. This is really no different then a skilled carpenter know how to build a robust wheel chair ramp. A bad contractor will have unskilled carpenters build unsound ADA compliance that requires expensive maintenance later. The same applies for web dev shops.
  - macintux 6y ago
    A grocery store is going to find it far easier to recognize shoddy workmanship in the physical world. And, again, the only software that ever "finishes" is the software that falls into buggy disuse. The same attributes that make the digital world much faster to create a solution than the analog world make it much more challenging to maintain over the long run, and more difficult to for most people to be able to tell the difference between good work and poor work. I'm not saying we shouldn't expect the business world to be accessible online, just that I'm not convinced it's practical for smaller businesses. I think the end of that road is just forcing them all into Facebook's arms, which is the last place I want them to be.
  - extra88 6y ago
    > web development is an industry with skilled workers It's an industry with some skilled workers but a lot that aren't. It's amazing to me, who watched the web develop as a non-professional, how many workers don't know basic things about HTML, CSS specificity, etc. That ignorance leads to the web being worse in many ways, not just less accessible. I used to think that if you call yourself a "web professional" that part of that was understanding how to make things accessible, basically "it's your job, do your job;" if the so-called professionals did that then the problems of inaccessible sites would go away. I do still think there are some fundamentals that every web professional should know and handling those takes care the large majority of barriers. I underestimated how vast the web profession is and the scope of possible accessibility problems and now think that even if web professionals become better educated, there will always be a need for specialists in accessibility (which is self-serving since I have become one).
freeone3000 6y ago
Yes. This is actually an argument against -- what defines a "reasonable" accomodation includes what alternative solutions are available and the cost to implement. For instance, an alternative accommodation could be a member of store staff retrieving your items for you, instead of putting in a ramp, if the necessary ramp would violate sidewalk clearance.
WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
It does seem to dance around the issue of how easy bridges are to build without major flaws compared to how hard similarly sized software applications are to build without major flaws. I would suggest that it is entirely possible the same reasons that we can't treat software projects like physical construction projects also applies to accessibility. I'm not saying that is the case, but that I haven't seen reason for it to not be the case and it should remain an option until shown otherwise.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > It does seem to dance around the issue of how easy bridges are to build without major flaws ahaha what https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E2%80%93present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E...
  - WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
    There are a lot of bridges in the world, so the list is relatively short. If your argument that bridges are as hard (or harder) to build safely compared to software at a similar scale, I don't think a list of bridge failures backs that argument without comparing it to total number of bridges and then doing similar comparisons between software failures and software.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  I don’t think it is easier to build a safe bridge, we just make the effort to do it.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    I think you're right. Unsafe bridges kill people. Most bad software does not, and when it might, we generally are more careful with it (not always, just as we still have bridge failures from time to time).

macintux 6y ago

You can build a wheelchair ramp and perhaps it needs some new lumber occasionally but it's relatively easy to spot and fix problems. For a website, it could easily fall out of accessibility with an update to some library you rely on, and you wouldn't even know. To me, the difference is that software is never finished and behaves differently depending on who's using it on what OS and what web browser, and is thus that much harder to keep compliant.

Tomte 6y ago
That's only because there are no incentives to make libraries work (and keep working) wrt to accessibility. So the courts provide the incentives.
Forge36 6y ago
What if a business is in a city and the building is old? The number of stores downtown with a single step is surprisingly high. What are the rules on building the ramp on a public sidewalk? The roadblock isn't always maintenance, it's doing the work up front to avoid that step being a problem later.
- macintux 6y ago
  There are definitely edge cases where a ramp can be harder to build than an accessible website is to maintain over the long run. I'm unconvinced that's more than a tiny fraction of the overall problem space.
derekp7 6y ago
If you are using automated testing then you need to make the site accessible to the test script. Which kind of makes it accessible to screen readers automatically.
runarberg 6y ago
I feel like this attitude undermines the fact that web development is an industry with skilled workers. A well crafted web site is accessible by default. A skilled web developer knows which parts can be problematic and deals with it. This is really no different then a skilled carpenter know how to build a robust wheel chair ramp. A bad contractor will have unskilled carpenters build unsound ADA compliance that requires expensive maintenance later. The same applies for web dev shops.
- macintux 6y ago
  A grocery store is going to find it far easier to recognize shoddy workmanship in the physical world. And, again, the only software that ever "finishes" is the software that falls into buggy disuse. The same attributes that make the digital world much faster to create a solution than the analog world make it much more challenging to maintain over the long run, and more difficult to for most people to be able to tell the difference between good work and poor work. I'm not saying we shouldn't expect the business world to be accessible online, just that I'm not convinced it's practical for smaller businesses. I think the end of that road is just forcing them all into Facebook's arms, which is the last place I want them to be.
- extra88 6y ago
  > web development is an industry with skilled workers It's an industry with some skilled workers but a lot that aren't. It's amazing to me, who watched the web develop as a non-professional, how many workers don't know basic things about HTML, CSS specificity, etc. That ignorance leads to the web being worse in many ways, not just less accessible. I used to think that if you call yourself a "web professional" that part of that was understanding how to make things accessible, basically "it's your job, do your job;" if the so-called professionals did that then the problems of inaccessible sites would go away. I do still think there are some fundamentals that every web professional should know and handling those takes care the large majority of barriers. I underestimated how vast the web profession is and the scope of possible accessibility problems and now think that even if web professionals become better educated, there will always be a need for specialists in accessibility (which is self-serving since I have become one).

freeone3000 6y ago

Yes. This is actually an argument against -- what defines a "reasonable" accomodation includes what alternative solutions are available and the cost to implement. For instance, an alternative accommodation could be a member of store staff retrieving your items for you, instead of putting in a ramp, if the necessary ramp would violate sidewalk clearance.

WindyLakeReturn 6y ago

It does seem to dance around the issue of how easy bridges are to build without major flaws compared to how hard similarly sized software applications are to build without major flaws. I would suggest that it is entirely possible the same reasons that we can't treat software projects like physical construction projects also applies to accessibility. I'm not saying that is the case, but that I haven't seen reason for it to not be the case and it should remain an option until shown otherwise.

jcelerier 6y ago
> It does seem to dance around the issue of how easy bridges are to build without major flaws ahaha what https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E2%80%93present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E...
- WindyLakeReturn 6y ago
  There are a lot of bridges in the world, so the list is relatively short. If your argument that bridges are as hard (or harder) to build safely compared to software at a similar scale, I don't think a list of bridge failures backs that argument without comparing it to total number of bridges and then doing similar comparisons between software failures and software.
cortesoft 6y ago
I don’t think it is easier to build a safe bridge, we just make the effort to do it.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  I think you're right. Unsafe bridges kill people. Most bad software does not, and when it might, we generally are more careful with it (not always, just as we still have bridge failures from time to time).