5 ms·

I mean if I need to lower costs ASAP, nice to haves like A11y would be the first to get cut.

by jacooper 4y ago

koshergweilo 4y ago
Is A11y a nice to have? Doesn't the ADA mandate a certain level of accessibility on companies of a certain size.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Not the ADA specifically, but American courts have generally held that large commercial websites do need to be accessible in terms of the ADA. That's aside from the cruelty of diminishing accessibility on a major social platform, slowly cutting off disabled users, despite its cost likely being a rounding error in the greater scheme of things.
  - qubex 4y ago
    I’m very impressed by the use of ‘cruelty’.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    The current website already supports accessibility. The team being fired or laid off doesn't mean that suddenly goes away.
    - _djo_ 4y ago
      That's why I said diminishing accessibility and slowly cutting off disabled users. This obviously isn't going to happen immediately, but every new feature will be less accessible and maybe even not provide accommodations entirely.
      - decremental 4y ago
        Possibly true but I would imagine the team created an internal Bible of all accessibility requirements and that all of that information wasn't siloed in the heads of each employee in that department.
        notamy 4y ago
        It's a sign of where it's going though. Will the accessibility info be kept up to date? Will the other teams pay attention to it as much if there's not an internal "force" keeping it on people's mind? Will it be considered at a similar level again in the future? The answer to all of these might be "yes," but getting rid of the employees who are most responsible for this doesn't exactly strike me as an act that views a11y favourably.
        decremental 4y ago
        It might not be a sign of where anything is going. He could just be cleaning house of undesirables. I'm just going to wait and see.
        throwaway821909 4y ago
        There's presumably a gap between the current level and what's legally required, and they can afford to let things slip a bit without getting in trouble.
        deadbunny 4y ago
        And I'm sure it'll stay on that unvisited Confluence page for a year or so till some doing some cleanup goes "A11y team? They left agees ago." and deletes it.
        DonHopkins 4y ago
        It's actually much cheaper to buy more disk drives than to pay somebody to delete files.
        kaba0 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - neltnerb 4y ago
    There was a court case in recent memory mandating that universities caption any video they publish. It was specifically relying on the ADA. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkim/2019/11/29/harvard-university-national-assoc-of-the-deaf-lawsuit/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkim/2019/11/29/harvard-uni... "In the United States alone, approximately 50 million people are considered deaf or hard of hearing. The failure to provide appropriate accommodations to this community is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973."
    - _djo_ 4y ago
      If you read through the case history, you can see that the ADA does not have specific language saying something like "websites above size x must be accessible, and that means a, b, and c need to be followed." Much of that has been developed into case law and precedent by judges ruling in numerous lawsuits over the years, which is why it's still a somewhat grey area for edge cases.
    - iso1337 4y ago
      And that's why a ton of video lectures from UC Berkeley had to be taken down due to lack of captions. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856 The spirit of the law is good, but sometimes it just means that we lose "good enough" in pursuit of "perfect".
jshzglr 4y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted, it's a pretty obvious assessment.
- calderwoodra 4y ago
  It could be accurate, but it's hard to imagine having this little empathy.
  - 8b16380d 4y ago
    No it’s quite easy. Executives all over the country are doing the exact same thing.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - joshmanders 4y ago
    No need to imagine, you are living it. Accessibility on Quantbase is abysmal. Maybe bring that up before telling others how to handle it on their stuff? Score of 53 out of 100 with 4 critical issues, knocking it out of compliance. https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/audit/?website=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.getquantbase.com%2F&flag=us https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/audit/?website=https%3A...
sterlind 4y ago
saying a11y is a nice-to-have is like saying Unicode is a nice-to-have. if you cut Unicode support, the only thing you'll personally notice is lack of emojis, but Chinese/Hindi/Russian speakers won't be able to use it at all, without resorting to Pinyin or something.
- lazide 4y ago
  And if you don’t have customers who use those, it won’t be a huge loss. That covers the vast majority of businesses. Probably not Twitter though.
- jacooper 4y ago
  It depends on the users? Twitter has a large and diverse user base, so supporting Unicode is a priority but A11y isn't.
superb-owl 4y ago
a11y is no more a "nice to have" than a wheelchair ramp. It's a legal and moral requirement. This is like saying security is "nice to have"
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  There are no moral requirements
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    Certainly not for "free speech" that costs $8/month.
    - School-Cotton 4y ago
      AFAIK that’s a misconstrual. Having a “verified” blue checkmark will cost $8 a month, but using Twitter and saying whatever you want on it will still be free.
      - joshmanders 4y ago
        Too many people think that checkmark = free speech and all us peasants using Twitter without it aren't worthy of the mark.
      - kjeetgill 4y ago
        I have no horse in this race — I'm not on Twitter — but does anyone know if the blue checkmark boosts your posts in the feed/recommendation engine? I'd expect it does implicitly at least because people must interact with those users differently.
        fathyb 4y ago
        It does, verified accounts get prioritized ranking and are listed first in tweet responses.
    - 4y ago
culi 4y ago
> nice to haves like A11y People get upset about government regulation forcing companies to take accessibility seriously but then people like you come around to prove exactly why that kind of regulation is necessary. I'd like to live in a world where it wasn't but comments like these make it abundantly clear that we're nowhere close to that world
- swyx 4y ago
  how about "we believe so much in a11y being everyone's job, and a legal requirement of doing your job, that we didnt want engineers pawning off that essential task to a dedicated a11y team?" obviously not true but theres a few ways to slice this news.
  - culi 4y ago
    That's like saying we shouldn't have a security team because being keen on security concerns should be an expectation of every dev. Of course this is true to an extent, but obviously there's a whole field of specialization that would be unrealistic to expect of every single dev to have. Same business with a11y
- jacooper 4y ago
  > > nice to haves like A11y > People get upset about government regulation forcing companies to take accessibility seriously but then people like you come around to prove exactly why that kind of regulation is necessary. You can still have accessibility without having a whole dedicated team for it > I'd like to live in a world where it wasn't but comments like these make it abundantly clear that we're nowhere close to that world I meant it as having a dedicated accessibility the team not just going to Twitter and removing all accessibility settings.

I mean if I need to lower costs ASAP, nice to haves like A11y would be the first to get cut.

koshergweilo 4y ago

Is A11y a nice to have? Doesn't the ADA mandate a certain level of accessibility on companies of a certain size.

_djo_ 4y ago
Not the ADA specifically, but American courts have generally held that large commercial websites do need to be accessible in terms of the ADA. That's aside from the cruelty of diminishing accessibility on a major social platform, slowly cutting off disabled users, despite its cost likely being a rounding error in the greater scheme of things.
- qubex 4y ago
  I’m very impressed by the use of ‘cruelty’.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  The current website already supports accessibility. The team being fired or laid off doesn't mean that suddenly goes away.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    That's why I said diminishing accessibility and slowly cutting off disabled users. This obviously isn't going to happen immediately, but every new feature will be less accessible and maybe even not provide accommodations entirely.
    - decremental 4y ago
      Possibly true but I would imagine the team created an internal Bible of all accessibility requirements and that all of that information wasn't siloed in the heads of each employee in that department.
      - notamy 4y ago
        It's a sign of where it's going though. Will the accessibility info be kept up to date? Will the other teams pay attention to it as much if there's not an internal "force" keeping it on people's mind? Will it be considered at a similar level again in the future? The answer to all of these might be "yes," but getting rid of the employees who are most responsible for this doesn't exactly strike me as an act that views a11y favourably.
        decremental 4y ago
        It might not be a sign of where anything is going. He could just be cleaning house of undesirables. I'm just going to wait and see.
        throwaway821909 4y ago
        There's presumably a gap between the current level and what's legally required, and they can afford to let things slip a bit without getting in trouble.
      - deadbunny 4y ago
        And I'm sure it'll stay on that unvisited Confluence page for a year or so till some doing some cleanup goes "A11y team? They left agees ago." and deletes it.
        DonHopkins 4y ago
        It's actually much cheaper to buy more disk drives than to pay somebody to delete files.
        kaba0 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- neltnerb 4y ago
  There was a court case in recent memory mandating that universities caption any video they publish. It was specifically relying on the ADA. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkim/2019/11/29/harvard-university-national-assoc-of-the-deaf-lawsuit/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkim/2019/11/29/harvard-uni... "In the United States alone, approximately 50 million people are considered deaf or hard of hearing. The failure to provide appropriate accommodations to this community is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973."
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    If you read through the case history, you can see that the ADA does not have specific language saying something like "websites above size x must be accessible, and that means a, b, and c need to be followed." Much of that has been developed into case law and precedent by judges ruling in numerous lawsuits over the years, which is why it's still a somewhat grey area for edge cases.
  - iso1337 4y ago
    And that's why a ton of video lectures from UC Berkeley had to be taken down due to lack of captions. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856 The spirit of the law is good, but sometimes it just means that we lose "good enough" in pursuit of "perfect".

jshzglr 4y ago

Not sure why this is downvoted, it's a pretty obvious assessment.

calderwoodra 4y ago
It could be accurate, but it's hard to imagine having this little empathy.
- 8b16380d 4y ago
  No it’s quite easy. Executives all over the country are doing the exact same thing.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- joshmanders 4y ago
  No need to imagine, you are living it. Accessibility on Quantbase is abysmal. Maybe bring that up before telling others how to handle it on their stuff? Score of 53 out of 100 with 4 critical issues, knocking it out of compliance. https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/audit/?website=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.getquantbase.com%2F&flag=us https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/audit/?website=https%3A...

sterlind 4y ago

saying a11y is a nice-to-have is like saying Unicode is a nice-to-have. if you cut Unicode support, the only thing you'll personally notice is lack of emojis, but Chinese/Hindi/Russian speakers won't be able to use it at all, without resorting to Pinyin or something.

lazide 4y ago
And if you don’t have customers who use those, it won’t be a huge loss. That covers the vast majority of businesses. Probably not Twitter though.
jacooper 4y ago
It depends on the users? Twitter has a large and diverse user base, so supporting Unicode is a priority but A11y isn't.

superb-owl 4y ago

a11y is no more a "nice to have" than a wheelchair ramp. It's a legal and moral requirement. This is like saying security is "nice to have"

adam_arthur 4y ago
There are no moral requirements
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Certainly not for "free speech" that costs $8/month.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    AFAIK that’s a misconstrual. Having a “verified” blue checkmark will cost $8 a month, but using Twitter and saying whatever you want on it will still be free.
    - joshmanders 4y ago
      Too many people think that checkmark = free speech and all us peasants using Twitter without it aren't worthy of the mark.
    - kjeetgill 4y ago
      I have no horse in this race — I'm not on Twitter — but does anyone know if the blue checkmark boosts your posts in the feed/recommendation engine? I'd expect it does implicitly at least because people must interact with those users differently.
      - fathyb 4y ago
        It does, verified accounts get prioritized ranking and are listed first in tweet responses.
  - 4y ago

culi 4y ago

> nice to haves like A11y People get upset about government regulation forcing companies to take accessibility seriously but then people like you come around to prove exactly why that kind of regulation is necessary. I'd like to live in a world where it wasn't but comments like these make it abundantly clear that we're nowhere close to that world

swyx 4y ago
how about "we believe so much in a11y being everyone's job, and a legal requirement of doing your job, that we didnt want engineers pawning off that essential task to a dedicated a11y team?" obviously not true but theres a few ways to slice this news.
- culi 4y ago
  That's like saying we shouldn't have a security team because being keen on security concerns should be an expectation of every dev. Of course this is true to an extent, but obviously there's a whole field of specialization that would be unrealistic to expect of every single dev to have. Same business with a11y
jacooper 4y ago
> > nice to haves like A11y > People get upset about government regulation forcing companies to take accessibility seriously but then people like you come around to prove exactly why that kind of regulation is necessary. You can still have accessibility without having a whole dedicated team for it > I'd like to live in a world where it wasn't but comments like these make it abundantly clear that we're nowhere close to that world I meant it as having a dedicated accessibility the team not just going to Twitter and removing all accessibility settings.