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What business is there to lose? For example: No restaurant will go bankrupt or even perceptibly lose money because blind people can’t read the menu on their we
by ugh 15y ago
What business is there to lose?
For example: No restaurant will go bankrupt or even perceptibly lose money because blind people can’t read the menu on their website. There are too few of them.
Also: Getting accessibility right would be costly and complicated for those restaurants. The vast majority of restaurant owners knows nothing about accessibility in the web, they would have to hire someone who does.
Creating a successful product means more often than not picking the commonly used stuff and leaving everything else out. The same dynamic is at play here, the only difference is that the affected people have no choice.
The incentives are set up in a way to favor inaccessible websites. I don’t see how the market can solve this problem.
- GiraffeNecktie 15y ago" Getting accessibility right would be costly and complicated" What's costly and complicated about plain old HTML?
- ugh 15y agoThe restaurant owners of my example usually don’t even know what HTML is. They have to hire someone to do it for them (that’s the costly part) and they also have to find out who to hire (that’s the complicated part, given that they have no idea about HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash and accessibility).
- patio11 15y agoWhat's costly and complicated about plain old HTML? Customer: We want a menu on our website. Developer: We can do that. The meter is running. Customer: Crikey that meter goes up quickly. Just OCR it! That should be almost free! Developer: We can do that. The meter is running. Customer: There are all sorts of speling mistkes! Fix them! Developer: We can do that. The meter is running. Customer: Now all the text is right but it looks nothing like the menu! We're a freaking restaurant. We spent thousands of dollars to make the menu look good because it is the freaking menu. Make with that HTML and CSS... stuff! Developer: We can do that. The meter is running. Customer: Finally, we're getting somewhere! But the description of Chicken Genovese overlaps with the wine list when viewed on an obsolete browser or a Kindle! Make with the fixings! Developer: We can do that. The meter is running.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- MaysonL 15y agoWell, if they get a hundred complaints from potential or former customers saying they won't eat there until it's fixed, something may happen. Some of these problems are only soluble by mass, organized action. Suppose there were a blind guy standing outside your restaurant, handing patrons informative pamphlets? How long would it take for a few infuriated regulars telling him they wouldn't be back till the problem was fixed to get the owner's attention to the problem? Just sayin': squeaky wheels get greased.
- ugh 15y agoSure. PR fallout or DDoSing support offers additional leverage to mere and minimal lost business. Especially really large companies don’t want to have an attack surface called “They don’t care about disabled people!” (There are also other reasons why larger companies have more incentives to be accessible.) Evidently, however, that’s not enough. It’s hard to create public outrage. It’s hard to organize. Hard enough that being hit by outrage or being swamped by phone calls is quite unlikely. It’s a simple numbers game. People don’t want to organize shitstorms all the time. They have better things to do.
- Mz 15y agoFor example: No restaurant will go bankrupt or even perceptibly lose money because blind people can’t read the menu on their website. There are too few of them. Old people often have money. They also tend to have eyesight issues and other physical limitations. At the moment, old people are underrepresented online. Give it a few years and that won't likely remain true. At some point, making it easier for people with eyesight issues to access your site may become a much bigger issue. Some businesses may not realize it is impacting them, but I strongly suspect it will seriously begin to impact them in the not too distant future.
- ugh 15y agoA website that is accessible for (most) old people is not automatically also accessible for, say, the blind. I fear, however, that you might be overlooking the point and get lost in small details: If something is a lot of work and only brings very few more customers, market mechanisms are no solution. The stars may align every once in a while and circumstances may create a situation where the same improvement also benefits a different and much larger group of people but you can’t take that for granted.
- Mz 15y agoNo, I'm well aware of that point. I'm also aware that what is easily accessibly for people with limitations is frequently more easy to use for "normal" people. As someone with a real serious handicap who finally was able to get a normal job (after many years of basically being unemployable), I am keenly aware of a) the ways in which my differences set me apart from others and b) the ways in which so many "normal" people are also handicapped but don't frame it that way. I'm strongly convinced that "personal preferences" are typically rooted in ease of use in the face of some issue or other which may not be fully acknowledged as a handicap. But that's a rather complicated discussion that perhaps would not be appreciated here: People who view themselves as "not handicapped" tend to get rather defensive if someone suggests they really aren't that different from someone like me. Peace.
- ugh 15y ago
- lizzard 15y agoTherefore, it would be a good thing to educate more web developers and the public in general about what it takes to make sites more accessible.