4 ms·

Web accessibility is indeed a very important thing for people like me. I am aware we are a very small minority with rather special needs in this regard, but be

by lynx23 4y ago

Web accessibility is indeed a very important thing for people like me. I am aware we are a very small minority with rather special needs in this regard, but believe me, investing in accessibility and therefore allowing people with visual and motor disabilities to interact with the digital world can have unexpectedly wonderful consequences for those benefiting from it. It is not often that I manage to pull tech people into this topic such that it actually lasts, but the few I know have made quite a difference. I am pretty thrilled to hear I might have sparked an interest in web accessibility in you. Thanks for caring! Its a wonderful rabbit hole.

eru 4y ago
I'm only colour-blind, but I am too, benefitting from accessibility work meant primarily for blind people. And so do the elderly. Which will be all of us in the future (except those who plan to live fast and die young). Humanity is getting older and older on average, too.
- lynx23 4y ago
  Thats right. My girlfriend works for an assistive technology reseller. A growing number of their customers are elderly people who end up using technologies designed for the blind to keep on communicating. iOS with VoiceOver comes to mind. This was designed for the blind. But a determined elderly person whoes vision has deteriorated enough can also use it to avoid being cut off from everything.
Tzela 4y ago
I'm interested as well. I run a small science club for kids, mainly coding and electronics. Accessibility and being more inclusive is a very old bullet point on my long list of things to do, but I never found a place to start. Do you have any recommendation on where to learn this?
- lynx23 4y ago
  Hard question, because the field so diverse. In a sense, accessibility is much more then just trying to make computers useable for the blind. At a fundamental level, it is about making software flexible enough to be used in different modalities. People with very little motor capabilities are quite capable of looking at a screen, but they need help moving the mouse and perhaps a good predictive onscreen keyboard to be able to type. Blind people on the other hand are mostly quite content with a standard keyboard, but they need a totally different way of output, like tactile braille or synthesized speech. For the output part, it boils down to having an API which makes a third party app (like a screen reader) able to traverse the logical structure of what the application is presenting on-screen. That is mostly a sort of tree which reflects which widget contains what, and the different types of content. Such an API, however, is not only required for screen readers, but also very useful for things like automated testing, for instance. So a web automation or testing framework could actually be written on top of the accessibility APIs, and sometimes actually is. I am rumbling about this to get you in the right mindset. Its so hard to not see the forest because of all the trees around... That said, if we're talking about web accessibility, the obvious recommendation is the WAI WCAG. Maybe not the best reference for learning on how to implement things, but its a good start. Depending on the platform you're at home with, there are screen readers (NVDA, Orca, BRLTTY) which are open source and can be studied. On the user side, and on the "how is this implemented" side. Installing NVDA on Windows and turning the monitor off is a good way to get your feet wet. It might feel strange at first, but you will notice that things can actually get done this way. Its also a good way to test a website if you have no specific accessibility knowhow yet. Just try to navigate and read its contents.
  - cesarb 4y ago
    > [...] and turning the monitor off is a good way to get your feet wet. Is it weird that I, as someone with normal sight, had never thought of that as a simple way of testing whether your software (and the whole operating system together with it) works correctly with screen readers? It's like there's some sort of unconscious bias which links typing on a computer with its monitor being turned on. And I lived through the times when most computers didn't come with any pointing device, which led to most software back then being accessible to keyboard-only users (notable exceptions being things like Paintbrush, which required a mouse), so I understand the link between the lack of a device and software being designed to work well without that device.
- bcx 4y ago
  I recommend taking a look at https://teachaccess.org/ https://teachaccess.org/ as a starting point. They are non profit focused on bridging the gap between accessibility and education. I think they are mostly focused on college level exercises, but if your kids are doing coding I'd imagine their tutorials would be something to take a look at: https://teachaccess.org/initiatives/tutorial/ https://teachaccess.org/initiatives/tutorial/ As a complete aside for anyone reading this post, I think of improving accessibility as the "curb-cut effect", curb cuts (those ramps on sidewalks while cross streets) were created to improve urban access for those in wheel chairs, but also make it easier to use strollers, bikes, carts, and really for everyone walking in a built environment. When we as technologists make design decisions to make things more accessible I believe we end up with better products for everyone.
xhxhxh 4y ago
Hey man, what software do you recommend for screen reading? I'm trying to test my websites on accessibility and I've tried JAWS and NVDA so far (while using Lynx to navigate it) but found them a bit confusing. I'm not sure how one would use them in practice to navigate a site like Hacker news, which is relatively simple. Do you use something else entirely?
- lynx23 4y ago
  I am not quite sure I understand. If you're really trying to use JAWS or NVDA to work with lynx on the web, you are mixing things up. There are basically two worlds for blind users: the "old" text-only terminal interfaces thing which started in the good old DOS days at least for me) and was kept alive in Linux terminal applications. And the GUI world, where you have a screen reader interact with the various elements an application is putting on-screen. In the first world, the screen reader basically just sees a grid of characters. In the second world, the screen reader needs to reconstruct a text representation from the widget info it can obtain. In other words, if you want to work on the web, with something like NVDA as a screen reader, you want to use Firefox or some other modern browser, not lynx. If you are like me, spending 99% of your time in tmux, lynx is a nice thing to use, but there is nothing really accessibility specific here. Lynx is just a terminal application. And if you are a skilled blind user used to dealing with plain-text grid-stuff, you can use it just fine for whatever it still works for...
  - xhxhxh 4y ago
    Thank you for the explanation, it's a lot more clear now!
1shooner 4y ago
After reading Ian Hickson's proposal[1] to kill HTML and replace it with proprietary, binary content structure, I'm starting to think accessibility APIs might end up being the future of open, interoperable web publishing. 1.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh3GprskLC3KVdAlLGOsK6gFoEOD0/preview?pli=1&resourcekey=0-bPajpoo9IBZpG__-uCBE6w https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh3GprskLC...
- klabb3 4y ago
  One way to look at accessibility is that it’s a side effect of a well designed data exchange format. The same type of semantic document structure that let screen readers work, or increasing font size, is allowing all kinds of advantages to the user, such as adblocking and customizations. Every year that the state of software and apps deteriorate further, I am more and more impressed how the initial web struck such an incredible balance of all facets of a healthy software ecosystem. It stands as one of the marvels of the world, imo, that it remains virtually the same today, surviving the most vicious attacks on openness by both mega corps and governments alike.

by lynx23 4y ago

eru 4y ago

I'm only colour-blind, but I am too, benefitting from accessibility work meant primarily for blind people. And so do the elderly. Which will be all of us in the future (except those who plan to live fast and die young). Humanity is getting older and older on average, too.

lynx23 4y ago
Thats right. My girlfriend works for an assistive technology reseller. A growing number of their customers are elderly people who end up using technologies designed for the blind to keep on communicating. iOS with VoiceOver comes to mind. This was designed for the blind. But a determined elderly person whoes vision has deteriorated enough can also use it to avoid being cut off from everything.

Tzela 4y ago

I'm interested as well. I run a small science club for kids, mainly coding and electronics. Accessibility and being more inclusive is a very old bullet point on my long list of things to do, but I never found a place to start. Do you have any recommendation on where to learn this?

lynx23 4y ago
Hard question, because the field so diverse. In a sense, accessibility is much more then just trying to make computers useable for the blind. At a fundamental level, it is about making software flexible enough to be used in different modalities. People with very little motor capabilities are quite capable of looking at a screen, but they need help moving the mouse and perhaps a good predictive onscreen keyboard to be able to type. Blind people on the other hand are mostly quite content with a standard keyboard, but they need a totally different way of output, like tactile braille or synthesized speech. For the output part, it boils down to having an API which makes a third party app (like a screen reader) able to traverse the logical structure of what the application is presenting on-screen. That is mostly a sort of tree which reflects which widget contains what, and the different types of content. Such an API, however, is not only required for screen readers, but also very useful for things like automated testing, for instance. So a web automation or testing framework could actually be written on top of the accessibility APIs, and sometimes actually is. I am rumbling about this to get you in the right mindset. Its so hard to not see the forest because of all the trees around... That said, if we're talking about web accessibility, the obvious recommendation is the WAI WCAG. Maybe not the best reference for learning on how to implement things, but its a good start. Depending on the platform you're at home with, there are screen readers (NVDA, Orca, BRLTTY) which are open source and can be studied. On the user side, and on the "how is this implemented" side. Installing NVDA on Windows and turning the monitor off is a good way to get your feet wet. It might feel strange at first, but you will notice that things can actually get done this way. Its also a good way to test a website if you have no specific accessibility knowhow yet. Just try to navigate and read its contents.
- cesarb 4y ago
  > [...] and turning the monitor off is a good way to get your feet wet. Is it weird that I, as someone with normal sight, had never thought of that as a simple way of testing whether your software (and the whole operating system together with it) works correctly with screen readers? It's like there's some sort of unconscious bias which links typing on a computer with its monitor being turned on. And I lived through the times when most computers didn't come with any pointing device, which led to most software back then being accessible to keyboard-only users (notable exceptions being things like Paintbrush, which required a mouse), so I understand the link between the lack of a device and software being designed to work well without that device.
bcx 4y ago
I recommend taking a look at https://teachaccess.org/ https://teachaccess.org/ as a starting point. They are non profit focused on bridging the gap between accessibility and education. I think they are mostly focused on college level exercises, but if your kids are doing coding I'd imagine their tutorials would be something to take a look at: https://teachaccess.org/initiatives/tutorial/ https://teachaccess.org/initiatives/tutorial/ As a complete aside for anyone reading this post, I think of improving accessibility as the "curb-cut effect", curb cuts (those ramps on sidewalks while cross streets) were created to improve urban access for those in wheel chairs, but also make it easier to use strollers, bikes, carts, and really for everyone walking in a built environment. When we as technologists make design decisions to make things more accessible I believe we end up with better products for everyone.

xhxhxh 4y ago

Hey man, what software do you recommend for screen reading? I'm trying to test my websites on accessibility and I've tried JAWS and NVDA so far (while using Lynx to navigate it) but found them a bit confusing. I'm not sure how one would use them in practice to navigate a site like Hacker news, which is relatively simple. Do you use something else entirely?

lynx23 4y ago
I am not quite sure I understand. If you're really trying to use JAWS or NVDA to work with lynx on the web, you are mixing things up. There are basically two worlds for blind users: the "old" text-only terminal interfaces thing which started in the good old DOS days at least for me) and was kept alive in Linux terminal applications. And the GUI world, where you have a screen reader interact with the various elements an application is putting on-screen. In the first world, the screen reader basically just sees a grid of characters. In the second world, the screen reader needs to reconstruct a text representation from the widget info it can obtain. In other words, if you want to work on the web, with something like NVDA as a screen reader, you want to use Firefox or some other modern browser, not lynx. If you are like me, spending 99% of your time in tmux, lynx is a nice thing to use, but there is nothing really accessibility specific here. Lynx is just a terminal application. And if you are a skilled blind user used to dealing with plain-text grid-stuff, you can use it just fine for whatever it still works for...
- xhxhxh 4y ago
  Thank you for the explanation, it's a lot more clear now!

1shooner 4y ago

After reading Ian Hickson's proposal[1] to kill HTML and replace it with proprietary, binary content structure, I'm starting to think accessibility APIs might end up being the future of open, interoperable web publishing. 1.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh3GprskLC3KVdAlLGOsK6gFoEOD0/preview?pli=1&resourcekey=0-bPajpoo9IBZpG__-uCBE6w https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh3GprskLC...

klabb3 4y ago
One way to look at accessibility is that it’s a side effect of a well designed data exchange format. The same type of semantic document structure that let screen readers work, or increasing font size, is allowing all kinds of advantages to the user, such as adblocking and customizations. Every year that the state of software and apps deteriorate further, I am more and more impressed how the initial web struck such an incredible balance of all facets of a healthy software ecosystem. It stands as one of the marvels of the world, imo, that it remains virtually the same today, surviving the most vicious attacks on openness by both mega corps and governments alike.