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But you can't forgo accessibility. Anyone who would make software with your framework would be in violation of several laws. EDIT: I see that there are people

But you can't forgo accessibility. Anyone who would make software with your framework would be in violation of several laws. EDIT: I see that there are people down voting several comments in this thread in support of accessibility. I wonder what disagreement that you have? Surely it can't be "not a large enough market". There are more legally blind people in the world than Firefox users, yet web developers will happily test compatibility with that dying browser and eschew screen reader testing.

TheBrokenRail 3y ago
Not a lawyer, but if this was true, wouldn't a bunch of developers and companies be facing fines? Especially smaller open-source stuff. And larger companies as well (for instance, Reddit's mobile app is infamously inaccessible).
- moron4hire 3y ago
  Yes, they would. We're all only getting away with it because nobody has complained. It's a massive risk that companies are running. I don't know how Reddit has skirted it for so long, but there have been several high profile cases in recent years.
  - lol1906 3y ago
    The time isn’t right. They haven’t IPO’d yet. Should file the lawsuit at the end of the second day post-IPO.
  - brabel 3y ago
    Reddit can be used on a website (which is how I've always used it, old.reddit.com even better) and I assume it's "accessible" on the browser. As another commenter said, as long as disabled users have options for using your application, there's no ground for litigation.
skissane 3y ago
15+ years ago, I worked for an Australian university. We had a project to migrate to a new student email system – we were going from Novell NIMS (hosted on NetWare) to Sun/iPlanet/JES Messaging (on Solaris). We asked our disability services office to review the webmail's accessibility. The manager of that office was a blind woman, who was both a staff member and a student, so she had her own personal student account. She told us she couldn't use Sun's webmail, it wouldn't work at all with her screen reader. We complained to Sun, their response was "we know, wait for the next major version". What did we do? We offered her a shell account on a Solaris box with Pine, and told her that we'd offer the same to any vision-impaired students or staff members who requested it. And she was happy with that solution. IANAL a lawyer, but from my understanding of disability discrimination law (which is different in different countries anyway), you are legally obliged to offer "reasonable accomodations" – which doesn't have to necessarily be by making the application accessible, it could be offering access to an alternative application instead. Also, you are only obliged to provide accessibility if a disabled user asks for it, which assumes you have a user with a relevant disability – if your application is sufficiently niche, that might never happen. Suppose you build an internal GUI for SREs to use. Do you need to make that accessible for the vision impaired? Well, are any of your SREs vision impaired? If the answer is "no", then legally you don't. Maybe one day you'll employ a vision impaired SRE – at which point, then you will be obliged to make it work for them. But, maybe you never will, in which case you'll never have that legal obligation.
- MrJohz 3y ago
  > Well, are any of your SREs vision impaired? If the answer is "no", then legally you don't. Maybe one day you'll employ a vision impaired SRE – at which point, then you will be obliged to make it work for them. But, maybe you never will, in which case you'll never have that legal obligation. I don't completely disagree with you, I think accessibility is often a spectrum, and it's good to be thinking in terms of what your specific accessibility needs are, rather than just going for a scattergun approach. That said, I have some problems with this example. Firstly, a lot of features end up in the "accessibility" bin that are more broadly useful (the "cut curb effect"). Your SREs might be fully sighted and mobile, but they will probably still appreciate being able to drive the software fully by keyboard. And even from a development perspective, I've found having correct aria roles etc can often be useful for end-to-end testing because it allows you to be more semantic with the tests ("click on the thing with a button role with the text 'submit'" rather than "click on the element with the ID '...'"). Secondly, we often see accessibility in terms of the extreme cases ("you are blind, you have unlocked the accessibility treatment now"), but accessibility is more broad than that. If you're working late at night in a dark room, or trying to do something on a small laptop screen, or you were out climbing and now your wrists ache, you might still appreciate accessibility features - zooming, keyboard navigation, accessible themes etc. Getting this stuff right helps everyone. Finally, retrofitting accessibility is often a nightmare to actually implement, because (a) it's hard to notice what's not working unless you go through everything with a fine-toothed comb, and (b) if you don't have at least some accessibility plans to start with, you might have dug yourself into a corner that you can't get out of. For example, if your gui framework has no accessibility support, and someone blind starts in a month's time, what are you going to do? Rewrite the whole application for them?
rudedogg 3y ago
> I see that there are people down voting several comments in this thread in support of accessibility. I wonder what disagreement that you have? Didn't downvote but I want to share a couple thoughts I've had about accessibility: - I assume that browser/electron accessibility is not really optimal for users. It's sort-of free if you're building web/browser stuff, which is nice because it's available by default, but I can imagine most applications could be tailored for accessibility and be much more productive and enjoyable for end-users. For instance a "blind mode" for a text editor would probably be a lot different than what you get out of the box from a screen reader + VS Code. (I would love to get feedback on this from someone using a screen reader or accessibility features.) - I worry you're providing a bit of a moat if you regulate/require accessible software, since for most applications that equates to using a native GUI toolkit or browser-based solution.
KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
What are those laws?
- rahoulb 3y ago
  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents Section 20
  - KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
    The EQA says that your website must provide reasonable access as any other user would have. It focuses on equality of usage, not specification of how software or supporting software should meet it (a la WCAG) You said >Anyone who would make software with your framework would be in violation of several laws. Which just isn't true as there are ways you can comply with EQA without every underpinning library being accessibility-compliant.
  - rvense 3y ago
    I'm not used to reading law in English, so this is all a bit hard for me to parse, but I'm having trouble finding the section that prescribes the addition of accessibility features to all software written for any purpose. Say I am a British person who decides to make a some common piece of software, like a spreadsheet, and offer it for download on the internet. Am I required by law to make it accessible? And if, for instance, the provision of accessibility features would require thousands of hours of redevelopment, does that fall under "reasonable adjustments"? I understand that the moment my software becomes required for someone's job, for instance, there might be a problem, but a few posts up it was implied that making software without accessibility features was in itself illegal in some way, and that just sounds doesn't sound right to me.
  - dfawcus 3y ago
    (Not a lawyer) Section 20: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/20 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/20 That does not call out in its table any reference to software. I can't see anything in it which would effect a binding to software products. Section 22 refers to regulations being able to define what are "auxiliary aids", so in theory an SI may have done so. Scanning the whole Act, the closest thing I can spot is Schedule 25: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/25 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/25, however even that defines it as “any service normally provided for remuneration, [...]". Note that is for an online Service, not a Good (which software would generally be). I've also not found what references it. So that may cover a web site, but only if it was a paid for thing (e.g. online newspaper sites accessed via subscription). I wonder if and how it applies to the likes of Amazon, where the site itself is not paid for, but goods available through it are. So unless someone can find specific references, I see no reason to believe there is such a statutory requirement in existence for software, certainly not for free software.
Qwertious 3y ago
AIUI that law only apply to businesses who make their employees use the software without accommodating their disablities, and customers that are required to use inaccessible platforms (e.g. only permitting refunds through a website and not in person/by mail, but the website isn't accessible). It doesn't actually require all programmers to exclusively ship their apps with frameworks with accessibility features. (IANAL)

TheBrokenRail 3y ago

Not a lawyer, but if this was true, wouldn't a bunch of developers and companies be facing fines? Especially smaller open-source stuff. And larger companies as well (for instance, Reddit's mobile app is infamously inaccessible).

moron4hire 3y ago
Yes, they would. We're all only getting away with it because nobody has complained. It's a massive risk that companies are running. I don't know how Reddit has skirted it for so long, but there have been several high profile cases in recent years.
- lol1906 3y ago
  The time isn’t right. They haven’t IPO’d yet. Should file the lawsuit at the end of the second day post-IPO.
- brabel 3y ago
  Reddit can be used on a website (which is how I've always used it, old.reddit.com even better) and I assume it's "accessible" on the browser. As another commenter said, as long as disabled users have options for using your application, there's no ground for litigation.

skissane 3y ago

15+ years ago, I worked for an Australian university. We had a project to migrate to a new student email system – we were going from Novell NIMS (hosted on NetWare) to Sun/iPlanet/JES Messaging (on Solaris). We asked our disability services office to review the webmail's accessibility. The manager of that office was a blind woman, who was both a staff member and a student, so she had her own personal student account. She told us she couldn't use Sun's webmail, it wouldn't work at all with her screen reader. We complained to Sun, their response was "we know, wait for the next major version". What did we do? We offered her a shell account on a Solaris box with Pine, and told her that we'd offer the same to any vision-impaired students or staff members who requested it. And she was happy with that solution. IANAL a lawyer, but from my understanding of disability discrimination law (which is different in different countries anyway), you are legally obliged to offer "reasonable accomodations" – which doesn't have to necessarily be by making the application accessible, it could be offering access to an alternative application instead. Also, you are only obliged to provide accessibility if a disabled user asks for it, which assumes you have a user with a relevant disability – if your application is sufficiently niche, that might never happen. Suppose you build an internal GUI for SREs to use. Do you need to make that accessible for the vision impaired? Well, are any of your SREs vision impaired? If the answer is "no", then legally you don't. Maybe one day you'll employ a vision impaired SRE – at which point, then you will be obliged to make it work for them. But, maybe you never will, in which case you'll never have that legal obligation.

MrJohz 3y ago
> Well, are any of your SREs vision impaired? If the answer is "no", then legally you don't. Maybe one day you'll employ a vision impaired SRE – at which point, then you will be obliged to make it work for them. But, maybe you never will, in which case you'll never have that legal obligation. I don't completely disagree with you, I think accessibility is often a spectrum, and it's good to be thinking in terms of what your specific accessibility needs are, rather than just going for a scattergun approach. That said, I have some problems with this example. Firstly, a lot of features end up in the "accessibility" bin that are more broadly useful (the "cut curb effect"). Your SREs might be fully sighted and mobile, but they will probably still appreciate being able to drive the software fully by keyboard. And even from a development perspective, I've found having correct aria roles etc can often be useful for end-to-end testing because it allows you to be more semantic with the tests ("click on the thing with a button role with the text 'submit'" rather than "click on the element with the ID '...'"). Secondly, we often see accessibility in terms of the extreme cases ("you are blind, you have unlocked the accessibility treatment now"), but accessibility is more broad than that. If you're working late at night in a dark room, or trying to do something on a small laptop screen, or you were out climbing and now your wrists ache, you might still appreciate accessibility features - zooming, keyboard navigation, accessible themes etc. Getting this stuff right helps everyone. Finally, retrofitting accessibility is often a nightmare to actually implement, because (a) it's hard to notice what's not working unless you go through everything with a fine-toothed comb, and (b) if you don't have at least some accessibility plans to start with, you might have dug yourself into a corner that you can't get out of. For example, if your gui framework has no accessibility support, and someone blind starts in a month's time, what are you going to do? Rewrite the whole application for them?

rudedogg 3y ago

> I see that there are people down voting several comments in this thread in support of accessibility. I wonder what disagreement that you have? Didn't downvote but I want to share a couple thoughts I've had about accessibility: - I assume that browser/electron accessibility is not really optimal for users. It's sort-of free if you're building web/browser stuff, which is nice because it's available by default, but I can imagine most applications could be tailored for accessibility and be much more productive and enjoyable for end-users. For instance a "blind mode" for a text editor would probably be a lot different than what you get out of the box from a screen reader + VS Code. (I would love to get feedback on this from someone using a screen reader or accessibility features.) - I worry you're providing a bit of a moat if you regulate/require accessible software, since for most applications that equates to using a native GUI toolkit or browser-based solution.

KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago

What are those laws?

rahoulb 3y ago
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents Section 20
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y ago
  The EQA says that your website must provide reasonable access as any other user would have. It focuses on equality of usage, not specification of how software or supporting software should meet it (a la WCAG) You said >Anyone who would make software with your framework would be in violation of several laws. Which just isn't true as there are ways you can comply with EQA without every underpinning library being accessibility-compliant.
- rvense 3y ago
  I'm not used to reading law in English, so this is all a bit hard for me to parse, but I'm having trouble finding the section that prescribes the addition of accessibility features to all software written for any purpose. Say I am a British person who decides to make a some common piece of software, like a spreadsheet, and offer it for download on the internet. Am I required by law to make it accessible? And if, for instance, the provision of accessibility features would require thousands of hours of redevelopment, does that fall under "reasonable adjustments"? I understand that the moment my software becomes required for someone's job, for instance, there might be a problem, but a few posts up it was implied that making software without accessibility features was in itself illegal in some way, and that just sounds doesn't sound right to me.
- dfawcus 3y ago
  (Not a lawyer) Section 20: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/20 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/20 That does not call out in its table any reference to software. I can't see anything in it which would effect a binding to software products. Section 22 refers to regulations being able to define what are "auxiliary aids", so in theory an SI may have done so. Scanning the whole Act, the closest thing I can spot is Schedule 25: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/25 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/25, however even that defines it as “any service normally provided for remuneration, [...]". Note that is for an online Service, not a Good (which software would generally be). I've also not found what references it. So that may cover a web site, but only if it was a paid for thing (e.g. online newspaper sites accessed via subscription). I wonder if and how it applies to the likes of Amazon, where the site itself is not paid for, but goods available through it are. So unless someone can find specific references, I see no reason to believe there is such a statutory requirement in existence for software, certainly not for free software.

Qwertious 3y ago

AIUI that law only apply to businesses who make their employees use the software without accommodating their disablities, and customers that are required to use inaccessible platforms (e.g. only permitting refunds through a website and not in person/by mail, but the website isn't accessible). It doesn't actually require all programmers to exclusively ship their apps with frameworks with accessibility features. (IANAL)