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Any sort of regulation around web accessibility is so much more nuanced than building a ramp up to a restaurant, having the right clearance under a sink, or off

by cush 4y ago

Any sort of regulation around web accessibility is so much more nuanced than building a ramp up to a restaurant, having the right clearance under a sink, or offering braille menus. It's orders of magnitude more complex in scale and requirements. I'm positive that, in general, the web needs to do so much better when it comes to web accessibility, but we might not be ready for regulation without a lot of guardrail around what types of sites are regulated. At least start with government sites, education, etc. and work out the kinks first.

kylehotchkiss 4y ago
I was surprised to find how easily https://accessibe.com/ https://accessibe.com/ can add some accessibility options to an existing site this week. I was half expecting it to break the site styles when toggling through the options but it did a really fine job while keeping the character of the site intact. It was a one-line script include. Sure, it’s complex to build that all from scratch but thankfully we have services coming in to help.
- MrJohz 4y ago
  My understanding is that most of these "just as a script" type tools are of minimal value to people with real disabilities. Most of the options they offer are already available as browser settings or external tools in the first place, and any additional support could be more effectively done by just making the right choices in the first place: proper accessibility tags on things like images and icons, text over iconography (or better yet text with iconography), proper semantic markup, etc. For more complicated things you need to start working more with aria tags, but in my experience they're a lot less complicated than they seem. And in card where interaction is involved (e.g. drop-down search bars) are usually better handled by either the browser, or an external library that will also handle the accessibility aspects. (This is true for pretty much all users - I use a lot of websites where their custom widgets are really hard to navigate if I'm using the keyboard. Doing this properly benefits pretty much everyone.) The other way of thinking about it is this: if these drop-in scripts were sufficient, why aren't people with disabilities using them via some sort of browser extension, thus negating any need for the law in the first place? After all, if it works so well, people with disabilities should have no issues browsing any site on their own... In practice, these scripts tend to oversell their benefits and be targeted at able-bodied people who don't have as good an idea of the full set of needs (and tools) that people with different disabilities have.

by cush 4y ago

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

I was surprised to find how easily https://accessibe.com/ https://accessibe.com/ can add some accessibility options to an existing site this week. I was half expecting it to break the site styles when toggling through the options but it did a really fine job while keeping the character of the site intact. It was a one-line script include. Sure, it’s complex to build that all from scratch but thankfully we have services coming in to help.

MrJohz 4y ago
My understanding is that most of these "just as a script" type tools are of minimal value to people with real disabilities. Most of the options they offer are already available as browser settings or external tools in the first place, and any additional support could be more effectively done by just making the right choices in the first place: proper accessibility tags on things like images and icons, text over iconography (or better yet text with iconography), proper semantic markup, etc. For more complicated things you need to start working more with aria tags, but in my experience they're a lot less complicated than they seem. And in card where interaction is involved (e.g. drop-down search bars) are usually better handled by either the browser, or an external library that will also handle the accessibility aspects. (This is true for pretty much all users - I use a lot of websites where their custom widgets are really hard to navigate if I'm using the keyboard. Doing this properly benefits pretty much everyone.) The other way of thinking about it is this: if these drop-in scripts were sufficient, why aren't people with disabilities using them via some sort of browser extension, thus negating any need for the law in the first place? After all, if it works so well, people with disabilities should have no issues browsing any site on their own... In practice, these scripts tend to oversell their benefits and be targeted at able-bodied people who don't have as good an idea of the full set of needs (and tools) that people with different disabilities have.