9 ms·

Hey, Please don't forget about accessibility. Getting this right from day 1 will make your life a lot easier in the long run. If I remember correctly, I was ne

Hey, Please don't forget about accessibility. Getting this right from day 1 will make your life a lot easier in the long run. If I remember correctly, I was never able to use Atom with a screen reader. Hearing custom UI already makes me nervous and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to use Zed with a screen reader either. Blind developers exist. Please don't forget about us. It's one of the few areas where we can actually make a meaningful difference together with our peers on an equal playing field.

serial_dev 4y ago
How do other editors/IDEs perform in terms of accessibility? What are your favorites?
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  I've only ever heard good things about Visual Studio in this area, not sure if other IDEs are comparable. I do know Eclipse has a specialized build for this purpose as well. I wonder if XCode is also decent in this regard. I think Notepad++ might be only other one from memory that I know of.
- dharmab 4y ago
  Visual Studio is quite good: https://youtu.be/94swlF55tVc https://youtu.be/94swlF55tVc
- ClawsOnPaws 4y ago
  My favorite is VS Code by far. I use it daily. They recently also added a bunch of sound cues to help figure out if code is folded or a line contains an error. It's pretty great. Auto completion reads well, the parameter hints read, even the built-in terminal works. So overall I'm really happy with it.
  - exysle 4y ago
    Would you mind commenting on XCode? I heard that Apple really cares about accessibility.
    - spartanatreyu 4y ago
      The design of the existing and previous mac mice and the new System Settings app in MacOS Ventura tell a different story.
      - dewey 4y ago
        > the new System Settings app in MacOS Ventura Maybe it's just me but I'd not judge things like that on the first non-public beta.
    - ClawsOnPaws 4y ago
      I don't have much experience with XCode, however the few things I did do seemed accessible. As accessible as XCode can be - I personally find a lot of the interface a bit confusing. Super long lists, nested options, but I assume those aren't things that are specifically confusing to people using assistive tech and I'm sure I'd be able to find my way around it well if I used it more. Mac seems to be a lot more consistent with their accessibility story than others, and we constantly get new features from them. With the new MacOS for example we got a VoiceOver feature that tells us when we have formatting problems in text, and we can finally get indentation announced (something which we had to do using custom scripting before). Not to mention all the cool things that involve some form of (live) image recognition, like telling us where people are, where doors are, etc etc.
  - kfrzcode 4y ago
    Microsoft is particularly good with regard to a11y and devtooling
  - behnamoh 4y ago
    speaking of VSCODE, i wonder if MS acquiring github has anything to do with sunsetting atom.
    - intern4tional 4y ago
      Not likely, GitHub is a separate business and makes their own decisions. MS also competes with GitHub also; Azure Repos are a thing, as is Azure DevOps and those are just two examples. MS has plenty of products that compete with each other. In some spaces this is a good strategy as you will capture more market share with two products than you will with one and you can avoid to an extent monopoly claims. GitHub Codespaces is what killed Atom and while MS was probably involved in the decision to develop Codespaces, the decision to sunset Atom likely wasn't explicitly made at that time; its simply a side affect as other things have eclipsed Atom.
      - rezoneight 4y ago
        Microsoft has moved essentially the whole development team for Azure DevOps to GitHub. GitHub is what they consider the future.
    - PoignardAzur 4y ago
      It probably played a pretty big role. Everything Atom could do, VsCode could do better. At some point it didn't make sense to put man-hours into two different editors with the exact same technology stack.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    I cannot comprehend being blind and developing for my existence. I think I would die, or else become a lecturer .
    - d1sxeyes 4y ago
      What an exceptionally unhelpful comment.
      - unethical_ban 4y ago
        It was. I was in a particularly moody state and my filter was gone. It was meant in a way to be sympathetic to the challenges of that situation but is phrased badly. I'd delete it but I can't.
        d1sxeyes 4y ago
        These things happen. Props for acknowledging.
polote 4y ago
It is normal to advocate for your needs but asking for it to be included from day 1 is weird. The same way you don't start a saas app with localization from day one. I'm not blind so for sure I won't really care about accessibility but honest question why not use an ide developed for blind people instead of using the same as non blind people?
- __jem 4y ago
  This comment is honestly shocking to me. It’s not “weird” for people with different needs to ask to be included in the software we build. Accessibility is a baseline for any product in 2022 and needs to be included from the start otherwise it inevitably won’t work when it’s strapped on later.
  - ziml77 4y ago
    I also find it weird. I’m not disabled but I think designing for accessibility is important. It’s hard to tack on later and have it work well
- LoveMortuus 4y ago
  I'm guessing that by "included day 1" they meant that if you do it this way it's much easier then having the product designed and then re-engeneering it to support accessibility later.
- girvo 4y ago
  It is not weird at all, and claiming that asking for accessibility to be considered is weird is frankly rude. Approaches like yours are why people who are differently abled feel left out and like second class citizens a lot of the time.
- hx2a 4y ago
  Please learn more about the needs of blind people before writing something like this. Adding accessibility for screen readers is much more difficult to add later in the project lifecycle. Thinking about those design considerations early makes a big difference in how accessible it will later. If developers don't think about these things early, most likely the product will never be fully accessible, ever. Blind people have seen this played out before with other software products and know where this path leads. (I'm not blind but have worked with blind developers. I'm not an expert in accessibility but I know enough to know how important it is to listen to accessibility needs)
mongol 4y ago
Unrelated question: how does accessibility work on smartphones? Do you use something like a physical keyboard to interact with GUI elements in apps?
- mutagen 4y ago
  I came across this video from 2020 that demonstrates a couple of ways it works on iOS: https://twitter.com/Kristy_Viers/status/1287189581926981634 https://twitter.com/Kristy_Viers/status/1287189581926981634 You can turn on the various accessibility features and try them yourselves. While I was already aware of the 'voiceover' features, I was blown away by the braille keyboard and how quickly she could type with it. Blind people use TTS set at ridiculous speeds that make my 1.5x podcast playback seem glacial. Even back in the late 80s I remember a blind classmate who had a portable electronic typewriter thing that read her entries back to her at rapid speed.
  - spartanatreyu 4y ago
    I commonly watch dev talks and walkthroughs on youtube at greater than 2x speed because the talkers make an effort to talk slowly for non native English speakers. Just pop open the console with F12, enter the following and hit enter: $('video').playbackRate = 2.5 Change `2.5` to whatever number you wish. Press up in the console to bring back your last command faster with the cursor at the end so you just delete the number, type a new number and hit enter.
    - bmn__ 4y ago
      Alternatively, <https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/enhancer-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/enhancer-for-youtub...> offers a much more convenient UI for playback speed.
    - velut 4y ago
      I made a website that uses bookmarklets just for that. https://www.videospeedup.com/ https://www.videospeedup.com/
- 4y ago
dao- 4y ago
Especially for a _collaborative_ editor, a11y seems like a must. Everyone can pick their own personal editor, but you don't want to shut out your (potential) peers from (potential) collaboration. Without accessibility, such an editor likely wouldn't stand a chance at Mozilla where I work; I certainly would lobby against it.

serial_dev 4y ago

How do other editors/IDEs perform in terms of accessibility? What are your favorites?

giancarlostoro 4y ago
I've only ever heard good things about Visual Studio in this area, not sure if other IDEs are comparable. I do know Eclipse has a specialized build for this purpose as well. I wonder if XCode is also decent in this regard. I think Notepad++ might be only other one from memory that I know of.
dharmab 4y ago
Visual Studio is quite good: https://youtu.be/94swlF55tVc https://youtu.be/94swlF55tVc
ClawsOnPaws 4y ago
My favorite is VS Code by far. I use it daily. They recently also added a bunch of sound cues to help figure out if code is folded or a line contains an error. It's pretty great. Auto completion reads well, the parameter hints read, even the built-in terminal works. So overall I'm really happy with it.
- exysle 4y ago
  Would you mind commenting on XCode? I heard that Apple really cares about accessibility.
  - spartanatreyu 4y ago
    The design of the existing and previous mac mice and the new System Settings app in MacOS Ventura tell a different story.
    - dewey 4y ago
      > the new System Settings app in MacOS Ventura Maybe it's just me but I'd not judge things like that on the first non-public beta.
  - ClawsOnPaws 4y ago
    I don't have much experience with XCode, however the few things I did do seemed accessible. As accessible as XCode can be - I personally find a lot of the interface a bit confusing. Super long lists, nested options, but I assume those aren't things that are specifically confusing to people using assistive tech and I'm sure I'd be able to find my way around it well if I used it more. Mac seems to be a lot more consistent with their accessibility story than others, and we constantly get new features from them. With the new MacOS for example we got a VoiceOver feature that tells us when we have formatting problems in text, and we can finally get indentation announced (something which we had to do using custom scripting before). Not to mention all the cool things that involve some form of (live) image recognition, like telling us where people are, where doors are, etc etc.
- kfrzcode 4y ago
  Microsoft is particularly good with regard to a11y and devtooling
- behnamoh 4y ago
  speaking of VSCODE, i wonder if MS acquiring github has anything to do with sunsetting atom.
  - intern4tional 4y ago
    Not likely, GitHub is a separate business and makes their own decisions. MS also competes with GitHub also; Azure Repos are a thing, as is Azure DevOps and those are just two examples. MS has plenty of products that compete with each other. In some spaces this is a good strategy as you will capture more market share with two products than you will with one and you can avoid to an extent monopoly claims. GitHub Codespaces is what killed Atom and while MS was probably involved in the decision to develop Codespaces, the decision to sunset Atom likely wasn't explicitly made at that time; its simply a side affect as other things have eclipsed Atom.
    - rezoneight 4y ago
      Microsoft has moved essentially the whole development team for Azure DevOps to GitHub. GitHub is what they consider the future.
  - PoignardAzur 4y ago
    It probably played a pretty big role. Everything Atom could do, VsCode could do better. At some point it didn't make sense to put man-hours into two different editors with the exact same technology stack.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  I cannot comprehend being blind and developing for my existence. I think I would die, or else become a lecturer .
  - d1sxeyes 4y ago
    What an exceptionally unhelpful comment.
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      It was. I was in a particularly moody state and my filter was gone. It was meant in a way to be sympathetic to the challenges of that situation but is phrased badly. I'd delete it but I can't.
      - d1sxeyes 4y ago
        These things happen. Props for acknowledging.

polote 4y ago

It is normal to advocate for your needs but asking for it to be included from day 1 is weird. The same way you don't start a saas app with localization from day one. I'm not blind so for sure I won't really care about accessibility but honest question why not use an ide developed for blind people instead of using the same as non blind people?

__jem 4y ago
This comment is honestly shocking to me. It’s not “weird” for people with different needs to ask to be included in the software we build. Accessibility is a baseline for any product in 2022 and needs to be included from the start otherwise it inevitably won’t work when it’s strapped on later.
- ziml77 4y ago
  I also find it weird. I’m not disabled but I think designing for accessibility is important. It’s hard to tack on later and have it work well
LoveMortuus 4y ago
I'm guessing that by "included day 1" they meant that if you do it this way it's much easier then having the product designed and then re-engeneering it to support accessibility later.
girvo 4y ago
It is not weird at all, and claiming that asking for accessibility to be considered is weird is frankly rude. Approaches like yours are why people who are differently abled feel left out and like second class citizens a lot of the time.
hx2a 4y ago
Please learn more about the needs of blind people before writing something like this. Adding accessibility for screen readers is much more difficult to add later in the project lifecycle. Thinking about those design considerations early makes a big difference in how accessible it will later. If developers don't think about these things early, most likely the product will never be fully accessible, ever. Blind people have seen this played out before with other software products and know where this path leads. (I'm not blind but have worked with blind developers. I'm not an expert in accessibility but I know enough to know how important it is to listen to accessibility needs)

mongol 4y ago

Unrelated question: how does accessibility work on smartphones? Do you use something like a physical keyboard to interact with GUI elements in apps?

mutagen 4y ago
I came across this video from 2020 that demonstrates a couple of ways it works on iOS: https://twitter.com/Kristy_Viers/status/1287189581926981634 https://twitter.com/Kristy_Viers/status/1287189581926981634 You can turn on the various accessibility features and try them yourselves. While I was already aware of the 'voiceover' features, I was blown away by the braille keyboard and how quickly she could type with it. Blind people use TTS set at ridiculous speeds that make my 1.5x podcast playback seem glacial. Even back in the late 80s I remember a blind classmate who had a portable electronic typewriter thing that read her entries back to her at rapid speed.
- spartanatreyu 4y ago
  I commonly watch dev talks and walkthroughs on youtube at greater than 2x speed because the talkers make an effort to talk slowly for non native English speakers. Just pop open the console with F12, enter the following and hit enter: $('video').playbackRate = 2.5 Change `2.5` to whatever number you wish. Press up in the console to bring back your last command faster with the cursor at the end so you just delete the number, type a new number and hit enter.
  - bmn__ 4y ago
    Alternatively, <https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/enhancer-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/enhancer-for-youtub...> offers a much more convenient UI for playback speed.
  - velut 4y ago
    I made a website that uses bookmarklets just for that. https://www.videospeedup.com/ https://www.videospeedup.com/
4y ago

dao- 4y ago

Especially for a _collaborative_ editor, a11y seems like a must. Everyone can pick their own personal editor, but you don't want to shut out your (potential) peers from (potential) collaboration. Without accessibility, such an editor likely wouldn't stand a chance at Mozilla where I work; I certainly would lobby against it.