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By that logic, isn't every screen sharing app violating the ADA? A screen reader can't read the text on someone else's screen in Zoom, Webex, Slack, etc. Zoom e

by ggreer 5y ago

By that logic, isn't every screen sharing app violating the ADA? A screen reader can't read the text on someone else's screen in Zoom, Webex, Slack, etc. Zoom even admits to this in their accessibility FAQ and encourages speakers to supplement with notes.[1] 1. https://zoom.us/accessibility/faq#faq11 https://zoom.us/accessibility/faq#faq11

mwcampbell 5y ago
> By that logic, isn't every screen sharing app violating the ADA? We'd love it if the legislation had that kind of teeth. As it happens, in my day job I've been developing a product to work around the inaccessibility of screen sharing in online meetings, starting with providing real-time access to PowerPoint slides. But I'm not here to plug that product.
- ggreer 5y ago
  Just curious, but where do you draw the line? To use a silly example: we don't legally require every that everyone who posts an image on social media include a written description. There must be some ratio of cost to benefit at which accommodations stop being reasonable. If we required that screen sharing tools were compatible with screen readers, we'd have to revamp many layers of abstractions. It would require changes to every operating system, every UI framework, every browser, and every screen sharing application. An alternative would be to throw a bunch of machine learning at the problem (to try to turn pixels back into meaning), but that would have a lot of broken corner cases. The issues would likely be as bad as auto-generated subtitles, which are generally not good enough to be considered ADA compliant.[1] My guess is that if the law changed tomorrow and mandated that screen sharing tools accommodate the blind, we'd end up with no cross-platform screen sharing tools. Microsoft would make their Windows screen sharing. Apple would make their MacOS screen sharing. Google would make their ChromeOS screen sharing, and none of them would be interoperable. Also desktop Linux would be SOL. 1. UC Berkeley was forced to delete over 20,000 videos of lectures because their auto-generated subtitles weren't accurate enough: https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08-30-UC-Berkeley-LOF.pdf https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...
  - dasyatidprime 5y ago
    > we don't legally require every that everyone who posts an image on social media include a written description Not that it takes too much away from your point, but I've experienced an interesting gap in this example. While not legally required, big chunks of the short-form-text fediverse (Mastodon/Pleroma/…) have had circulating posts recommending descriptive text for image posts, and I'm actually surprised by how many people get into the habit of complying naturally—perhaps because there's also an easily-noticeable slot in the UI for it? Ten or so years ago I remember it being like pulling teeth to explain to some people doing media projects on the Web that this kind of accessibility was important, and now with what seems to be culturally a similar crowd… huh, y'know?
  - mwcampbell 5y ago
    > My guess is that if the law changed tomorrow and mandated that screen sharing tools accommodate the blind, we'd end up with no cross-platform screen sharing tools. Solving this problem in a cross-platform way is hard, but not impossible, especially for a company as well-funded as Zoom. And yes, I have ideas about how it could be done, though like my suggestion about the Chromium accessibility tree, they're not necessarily fully baked.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > If we required that screen sharing tools were compatible with screen readers, we'd have to revamp many layers of abstractions. It would require changes to every operating system, every UI framework, every browser, and every screen sharing application. Why? You're basically putting half the screen reader on each side of the screen sharing tool. This requires a significant number of changes to the screen sharing tool, but shouldn't require changing anything else. > UC Berkeley was forced to delete over 20,000 videos of lectures because their auto-generated subtitles weren't accurate enough Compared to the effort of setting up all those courses, captioning services are really minor. I feel like they should have just fixed that. According to the document they even have an internal unit specifically for doing this. When it comes to the complaints that the presentations themselves were done wrong, that seems more like a situation where "fix it or delete it" is a problem.

by ggreer 5y ago

mwcampbell 5y ago

> By that logic, isn't every screen sharing app violating the ADA? We'd love it if the legislation had that kind of teeth. As it happens, in my day job I've been developing a product to work around the inaccessibility of screen sharing in online meetings, starting with providing real-time access to PowerPoint slides. But I'm not here to plug that product.

ggreer 5y ago
Just curious, but where do you draw the line? To use a silly example: we don't legally require every that everyone who posts an image on social media include a written description. There must be some ratio of cost to benefit at which accommodations stop being reasonable. If we required that screen sharing tools were compatible with screen readers, we'd have to revamp many layers of abstractions. It would require changes to every operating system, every UI framework, every browser, and every screen sharing application. An alternative would be to throw a bunch of machine learning at the problem (to try to turn pixels back into meaning), but that would have a lot of broken corner cases. The issues would likely be as bad as auto-generated subtitles, which are generally not good enough to be considered ADA compliant.[1] My guess is that if the law changed tomorrow and mandated that screen sharing tools accommodate the blind, we'd end up with no cross-platform screen sharing tools. Microsoft would make their Windows screen sharing. Apple would make their MacOS screen sharing. Google would make their ChromeOS screen sharing, and none of them would be interoperable. Also desktop Linux would be SOL. 1. UC Berkeley was forced to delete over 20,000 videos of lectures because their auto-generated subtitles weren't accurate enough: https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08-30-UC-Berkeley-LOF.pdf https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...
- dasyatidprime 5y ago
  > we don't legally require every that everyone who posts an image on social media include a written description Not that it takes too much away from your point, but I've experienced an interesting gap in this example. While not legally required, big chunks of the short-form-text fediverse (Mastodon/Pleroma/…) have had circulating posts recommending descriptive text for image posts, and I'm actually surprised by how many people get into the habit of complying naturally—perhaps because there's also an easily-noticeable slot in the UI for it? Ten or so years ago I remember it being like pulling teeth to explain to some people doing media projects on the Web that this kind of accessibility was important, and now with what seems to be culturally a similar crowd… huh, y'know?
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  > My guess is that if the law changed tomorrow and mandated that screen sharing tools accommodate the blind, we'd end up with no cross-platform screen sharing tools. Solving this problem in a cross-platform way is hard, but not impossible, especially for a company as well-funded as Zoom. And yes, I have ideas about how it could be done, though like my suggestion about the Chromium accessibility tree, they're not necessarily fully baked.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > If we required that screen sharing tools were compatible with screen readers, we'd have to revamp many layers of abstractions. It would require changes to every operating system, every UI framework, every browser, and every screen sharing application. Why? You're basically putting half the screen reader on each side of the screen sharing tool. This requires a significant number of changes to the screen sharing tool, but shouldn't require changing anything else. > UC Berkeley was forced to delete over 20,000 videos of lectures because their auto-generated subtitles weren't accurate enough Compared to the effort of setting up all those courses, captioning services are really minor. I feel like they should have just fixed that. According to the document they even have an internal unit specifically for doing this. When it comes to the complaints that the presentations themselves were done wrong, that seems more like a situation where "fix it or delete it" is a problem.