5 ms·

Add accessibility to your website

28 points by metadat 4y ago

metadat 4y ago
I found this to be remarkable in terms of both user-friendliness and respecting fellow human being's comfort. For a working functional demo example, check out the lower right-hand corner of this page: https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6652 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6652 (Start scrolling and the blue chair guy should appear)
meesterdude 4y ago
nice find! ;)
- metadat 4y ago
  I cede all credit to you! Thanks again for pointing me to it :)
  - meesterdude 4y ago
    thanks for posting it!
eyelidlessness 4y ago
Want this as a bookmarklet and/or extension. I’m betting it’s trivial but unfortunately I’m getting ready for a week of driving. If no one gets to it before me, I’ve got the repo started and I’ll gladly throw what I can together when I’ve got an idle moment for it.
- gregsadetsky 4y ago
  javascript:(function() {var s=document.createElement('script');s.src='https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/ranbuch/accessibility@master/dist/main.bundle.js';document.body.append(s);s.onload=function() {new Accessibility()}})() here as well: https://gist.github.com/gregsadetsky/d20b325a1848dd6009503b08f711c266 https://gist.github.com/gregsadetsky/d20b325a1848dd6009503b0...
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    You are a mensch! Didn’t even think to just go straight for the CDN, I’ve nearly forgotten this is a way scripts get distributed.
armchairhacker 4y ago
People who need accessibility should have a tool like this automatically injected into all of their sites (since, even if you believe all sites should add this, many are simply not going to, so it will need to be injected anyways). The real benefit IMO is if you can provide customization to the accessibility tool, so that a) they don't break your website, and b) you can add new custom tools if necessary. Without necessarily including the tool itself (though if you do need to include the tool to customize it that's ok). Then people who inject your accessibility tool will get access to that customization, and it will provide them a greatly enhanced experience. And if enough people join and you're lucky, it can become standardized and widely adopted, like ARIA.
webwielder2 4y ago
Toolbars are not the same thing as making your site accessible. In a lot of cases they simply replicate, poorly, that which is already provided by the browser and OS and don’t address fundamental problems like keyboard access and screen reader support. They are mainly a device to CYA. https://overlayfactsheet.com/ https://overlayfactsheet.com/
- andrei_says_ 4y ago
  They won’t CYA. A litigious entity can and will prove that an overlay is not a substitute for proper ADA compliance implementation and effort.
doomrobo 4y ago
This looks like a nice way to add some features to your website. But to all reading: Overlays are NOT the way to make your website accessible. They frequently do not work as intended, and sometimes even harm accessibility [0]. One particular overlay was so bad that it got sued under the ADA [1]. Unfortunately the only way to make your website accessible is to put in the work to make sure it complied with the standards. There’s lots of resources online for this. See [2] as a starting point. [0] https://adrianroselli.com/2022/09/overlays-underwhelm-at-id24.html https://adrianroselli.com/2022/09/overlays-underwhelm-at-id2... [1] https://adrianroselli.com/2022/03/faciliti-will-get-you-sued.html https://adrianroselli.com/2022/03/faciliti-will-get-you-sued... [2] https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/guides/wcag/ https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/guides/wcag/
userbinator 4y ago
increase text size decrease text size invert colors gray hues underline links big cursor reading guide text to speech speech to text suppress animations 1,2,5,10 are already features of the browser, 3 and 4 are easily accomplished with user stylesheets, 6 is an OS setting, 8 is what everyone using a screenreader already has, 9 seems like a useful addition, and I'm not sure what 7 is.
rado 4y ago
Accessibility is a part of web standards, not something to add.
butz 4y ago
Maybe release it as an extension, so only people who need it can enable it for any website? Otherwise it's just another layer of "useless things to turn off", adding on already big pile of cookies consent, newsletter registration popups, notifications, etc.

28 points by metadat 4y ago

I found this to be remarkable in terms of both user-friendliness and respecting fellow human being's comfort. For a working functional demo example, check out the lower right-hand corner of this page: https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6652 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6652 (Start scrolling and the blue chair guy should appear)

meesterdude 4y ago

nice find! ;)

metadat 4y ago
I cede all credit to you! Thanks again for pointing me to it :)
- meesterdude 4y ago
  thanks for posting it!

eyelidlessness 4y ago

Want this as a bookmarklet and/or extension. I’m betting it’s trivial but unfortunately I’m getting ready for a week of driving. If no one gets to it before me, I’ve got the repo started and I’ll gladly throw what I can together when I’ve got an idle moment for it.

gregsadetsky 4y ago
javascript:(function() {var s=document.createElement('script');s.src='https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/ranbuch/accessibility@master/dist/main.bundle.js';document.body.append(s);s.onload=function() {new Accessibility()}})() here as well: https://gist.github.com/gregsadetsky/d20b325a1848dd6009503b08f711c266 https://gist.github.com/gregsadetsky/d20b325a1848dd6009503b0...
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  You are a mensch! Didn’t even think to just go straight for the CDN, I’ve nearly forgotten this is a way scripts get distributed.

armchairhacker 4y ago

People who need accessibility should have a tool like this automatically injected into all of their sites (since, even if you believe all sites should add this, many are simply not going to, so it will need to be injected anyways). The real benefit IMO is if you can provide customization to the accessibility tool, so that a) they don't break your website, and b) you can add new custom tools if necessary. Without necessarily including the tool itself (though if you do need to include the tool to customize it that's ok). Then people who inject your accessibility tool will get access to that customization, and it will provide them a greatly enhanced experience. And if enough people join and you're lucky, it can become standardized and widely adopted, like ARIA.

webwielder2 4y ago

Toolbars are not the same thing as making your site accessible. In a lot of cases they simply replicate, poorly, that which is already provided by the browser and OS and don’t address fundamental problems like keyboard access and screen reader support. They are mainly a device to CYA. https://overlayfactsheet.com/ https://overlayfactsheet.com/

andrei_says_ 4y ago
They won’t CYA. A litigious entity can and will prove that an overlay is not a substitute for proper ADA compliance implementation and effort.

doomrobo 4y ago

This looks like a nice way to add some features to your website. But to all reading: Overlays are NOT the way to make your website accessible. They frequently do not work as intended, and sometimes even harm accessibility [0]. One particular overlay was so bad that it got sued under the ADA [1]. Unfortunately the only way to make your website accessible is to put in the work to make sure it complied with the standards. There’s lots of resources online for this. See [2] as a starting point. [0] https://adrianroselli.com/2022/09/overlays-underwhelm-at-id24.html https://adrianroselli.com/2022/09/overlays-underwhelm-at-id2... [1] https://adrianroselli.com/2022/03/faciliti-will-get-you-sued.html https://adrianroselli.com/2022/03/faciliti-will-get-you-sued... [2] https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/guides/wcag/ https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/guides/wcag/

userbinator 4y ago

increase text size decrease text size invert colors gray hues underline links big cursor reading guide text to speech speech to text suppress animations 1,2,5,10 are already features of the browser, 3 and 4 are easily accomplished with user stylesheets, 6 is an OS setting, 8 is what everyone using a screenreader already has, 9 seems like a useful addition, and I'm not sure what 7 is.

rado 4y ago

Accessibility is a part of web standards, not something to add.

butz 4y ago

Maybe release it as an extension, so only people who need it can enable it for any website? Otherwise it's just another layer of "useless things to turn off", adding on already big pile of cookies consent, newsletter registration popups, notifications, etc.