5 ms·

Imho you cannot approach the issue just from a pure numbers point of view. For instance, one big portion of the people browsing without Js are disabled people w

Imho you cannot approach the issue just from a pure numbers point of view. For instance, one big portion of the people browsing without Js are disabled people working with screen readers and such. True Story: I worked for a while on a website where users would upload and share tutorials on various topics. As the company behind it grew, it had the genius idea of selling print copies of their best tutorials. At some point, we were looking for a Python tutorial to publish. We select our favorite one, get in touch with the author and were genuinely delighted to find out that he was blind, accessing our app via screen reader. He went on to publish a book (last I heard selling at over 10 000 units in less than a year topping Amazon's sales in its category). It was our app (the general focus on accessibility, independance from Js was a big part of it) that allowed this cool blind kid to publish a best sellers book. The odds of something like this happening, clearly, aren't very high, but when they do it's instant gratification for the developer who worked on making it accessible. If you're too hung up on numbers and ROI, think of all the benefits the company got from the positive exposure it gathered from the press around the incident. In any case, unless the core of your app is in JS, it's always a good idea to provide alternatives.

nailer 15y ago
> For instance, one big portion of the people browsing without Js are disabled people working with screen readers and such. Shouldn't we fix the screen readers, rather than fixing every website? Any solution to any problems that begins with 'first change the world' is not a valid solution as the project will never get past that stage. The world would be a much better place if the effort and money spent on making ramps was spent on wheelchair provisioning and development.
- sophacles 15y ago
  Actually, we should be doing both. The screen reader usage paradigm, even with good screen readers, requires a site to have considered that case. For instance, translating icons popups, and other graphic information is a very hard problem to do without hints from the site developer. Some types of layout are very nice from a visual view, but terrible from a textual/reading point of view. It is problem that needs to be approached from all angles. To work it into an analogy: What is the point of having good, easily available wheelchairs, if there are no ramps (or equivalently wheelchair accessibility means) for people to use?
  - nailer 15y ago
    > To work it into an analogy: What is the point of having good, easily available wheelchairs, if there are no ramps (or equivalently wheelchair accessibility means) for people to use? Because the millions of dollars spent adding rubberized material to some-but-not-all street corners sounds-based UIs for some-but-not-all intersection lamps could easily buy those who need it a vehicle to climb stairs?
    - sophacles 15y ago
      Yeah, I'm sure you could engineer a wheelchair that fits into existing spaces reasonably AND climbs ALL stairs. </snark> Also: perhaps you are forgetting a few very important benefits of those street corner ramps that have nothing to do with wheelchairs: * People pushing strollers and carts now have an easier and safer way of getting out of the street. * Old folks who can walk but not climb stairs very well can get across the street easier. * Everyone has a non-0 probability of tripping as they cross the varied height curbs in cities - ramps reduces that significantly, saving society a lot of lawsuit and medical costs, this is a continuing benefit. Not a benefit, but a solid argument: * Since almost all of the money spent on putting these in is part of normal road/curb/sidewalk maintenance anyway, its probably not as expensive as you suggest, and since the tooling exists, why not do it right this time, rather than the old way? * Since the government is building sidewalks, do you really want your government to actively exclude people from participating in basic "for everyone" stuff because of reasons like wheelchair bounding? I can understand if it is a result of choices they make (e.g. keep sex offenders out of parks), but telling someone "sorry life sucked for you, no more participation" is not a function of a democracy.
      - kzrdude 15y ago
        I have noticed that accessibility features often help usability even if not strictly needed, just like in your argument. For example for restrooms, instead of a dime-sized button for soap, there can be an accessible button big as a palm that is easy to hit and light to push.
      - nailer 15y ago
- Drbble 15y ago
  That's a good idea about screenreaders, but a horrible example. Screen readers a easy to fix (with minor semantic improvements to markup, or providing an API) , since there is DOM. Ramps are trivial and more broadly applicable ("universally accessible" is the official term, since they help everyone, wheelchair or not) than permanent-need wheelchairs. Ramps are the JSON API of the physical world leader.
- kls 15y ago
  As someone who has worked extensively with JavaScript web apps specifically geared towards accessibility, I can say that without a doubt the two major screen readers work with JavaScript. There are some quarks that you have to deal with but they do work, the issue is that not many developers take the time to test with them and make the necessary tweaks to get them working correctly. The biggest one being ensuring that the tab orders on elements match the flow of the application dynamics.
  - SkyMarshal 15y ago
    Do you know of any good testing guides, checklists, or suites for ensuring your site, js or not, works with screenreaders? I'd like to do a more thorough job of supporting people with disabilities (blind, colorblind, etc.), and am compiling a list of resources.
    - kls 15y ago
      wave is a good tool, though they do complain about scripts, which can pretty much be ignored now days. Run in on HN and it will give you an idea of what it does http://wave.webaim.org/ http://wave.webaim.org/ http://www.webnauts.net/check.html http://www.webnauts.net/check.html also has some tools but their browser emulation is dated. That being said the automated tools are good for double checking your work but nothing will replace the need for downloading a reader like JAWS and going through your site. If you look at my other post in this story it gives some development type links. As for colorblind, I don't know, I am color blind so I get our free on that one, my sites are already accessible to the colorblind. The big offense on that one is always make sure you back up color coding with some other type of system such as a number or icon system.
- mixmastamyk 15y ago
  The web was built in a manner to separate content, presentation, and later logic. It is those who insist on adding requirements that break it. Which then have to be fixed (see css).
lucian1900 15y ago
Actually, modern screen readers and similar work off the DOM and tend to have full JS support (some are based on webkit).
- pferdefleisch 15y ago
  here's a link to support that http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/javascript-and-screenreaders/ http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/javascript-and-screenreade...
VMG 15y ago
What does disabling JavaScript have to do with accessibility?
- bmelton 15y ago
  Screen readers generally don't support content appended to the page after load. Twitter doesn't work on a screen reader.
  - kls 15y ago
    All of the major screen readers support content added to the DOM dynamically. They just watch particular events to know when and where to look, you have to ensure you are updating the DOM in a manner that they understand.
    - bmelton 15y ago
      Perhaps my knowledge is dated then. Thanks for the correction. Do you know of anywhere I can learn more?
      - kls 15y ago
        This is a dated article but it does give a good overview of how the screen readers work, some items have been improved in the screen readers since 08 but for the most part it is a good starting point http://northtemple.com/2008/10/07/javascript-and-screen-readers http://northtemple.com/2008/10/07/javascript-and-screen-read... also this is a good stack overflow conversation on getting the readers to read dynamic content http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3670570/getting-screen-reader-to-read-new-content-added-with-javascript http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3670570/getting-screen-re... and finally a little more bland but still containing a lot of good info the wai-aria specification http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/ http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/ . Also look at Dojo in my opinion they have the most advanced accessibility library out of all of the toolkits.
  - VMG 15y ago
    If that is the case, those screen readers are broken.

nailer 15y ago

> For instance, one big portion of the people browsing without Js are disabled people working with screen readers and such. Shouldn't we fix the screen readers, rather than fixing every website? Any solution to any problems that begins with 'first change the world' is not a valid solution as the project will never get past that stage. The world would be a much better place if the effort and money spent on making ramps was spent on wheelchair provisioning and development.

sophacles 15y ago
Actually, we should be doing both. The screen reader usage paradigm, even with good screen readers, requires a site to have considered that case. For instance, translating icons popups, and other graphic information is a very hard problem to do without hints from the site developer. Some types of layout are very nice from a visual view, but terrible from a textual/reading point of view. It is problem that needs to be approached from all angles. To work it into an analogy: What is the point of having good, easily available wheelchairs, if there are no ramps (or equivalently wheelchair accessibility means) for people to use?
- nailer 15y ago
  > To work it into an analogy: What is the point of having good, easily available wheelchairs, if there are no ramps (or equivalently wheelchair accessibility means) for people to use? Because the millions of dollars spent adding rubberized material to some-but-not-all street corners sounds-based UIs for some-but-not-all intersection lamps could easily buy those who need it a vehicle to climb stairs?
  - sophacles 15y ago
    Yeah, I'm sure you could engineer a wheelchair that fits into existing spaces reasonably AND climbs ALL stairs. </snark> Also: perhaps you are forgetting a few very important benefits of those street corner ramps that have nothing to do with wheelchairs: * People pushing strollers and carts now have an easier and safer way of getting out of the street. * Old folks who can walk but not climb stairs very well can get across the street easier. * Everyone has a non-0 probability of tripping as they cross the varied height curbs in cities - ramps reduces that significantly, saving society a lot of lawsuit and medical costs, this is a continuing benefit. Not a benefit, but a solid argument: * Since almost all of the money spent on putting these in is part of normal road/curb/sidewalk maintenance anyway, its probably not as expensive as you suggest, and since the tooling exists, why not do it right this time, rather than the old way? * Since the government is building sidewalks, do you really want your government to actively exclude people from participating in basic "for everyone" stuff because of reasons like wheelchair bounding? I can understand if it is a result of choices they make (e.g. keep sex offenders out of parks), but telling someone "sorry life sucked for you, no more participation" is not a function of a democracy.
    - kzrdude 15y ago
      I have noticed that accessibility features often help usability even if not strictly needed, just like in your argument. For example for restrooms, instead of a dime-sized button for soap, there can be an accessible button big as a palm that is easy to hit and light to push.
    - nailer 15y ago
Drbble 15y ago
That's a good idea about screenreaders, but a horrible example. Screen readers a easy to fix (with minor semantic improvements to markup, or providing an API) , since there is DOM. Ramps are trivial and more broadly applicable ("universally accessible" is the official term, since they help everyone, wheelchair or not) than permanent-need wheelchairs. Ramps are the JSON API of the physical world leader.
kls 15y ago
As someone who has worked extensively with JavaScript web apps specifically geared towards accessibility, I can say that without a doubt the two major screen readers work with JavaScript. There are some quarks that you have to deal with but they do work, the issue is that not many developers take the time to test with them and make the necessary tweaks to get them working correctly. The biggest one being ensuring that the tab orders on elements match the flow of the application dynamics.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  Do you know of any good testing guides, checklists, or suites for ensuring your site, js or not, works with screenreaders? I'd like to do a more thorough job of supporting people with disabilities (blind, colorblind, etc.), and am compiling a list of resources.
  - kls 15y ago
    wave is a good tool, though they do complain about scripts, which can pretty much be ignored now days. Run in on HN and it will give you an idea of what it does http://wave.webaim.org/ http://wave.webaim.org/ http://www.webnauts.net/check.html http://www.webnauts.net/check.html also has some tools but their browser emulation is dated. That being said the automated tools are good for double checking your work but nothing will replace the need for downloading a reader like JAWS and going through your site. If you look at my other post in this story it gives some development type links. As for colorblind, I don't know, I am color blind so I get our free on that one, my sites are already accessible to the colorblind. The big offense on that one is always make sure you back up color coding with some other type of system such as a number or icon system.
mixmastamyk 15y ago
The web was built in a manner to separate content, presentation, and later logic. It is those who insist on adding requirements that break it. Which then have to be fixed (see css).

lucian1900 15y ago

Actually, modern screen readers and similar work off the DOM and tend to have full JS support (some are based on webkit).

pferdefleisch 15y ago
here's a link to support that http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/javascript-and-screenreaders/ http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/javascript-and-screenreade...

VMG 15y ago

What does disabling JavaScript have to do with accessibility?

bmelton 15y ago
Screen readers generally don't support content appended to the page after load. Twitter doesn't work on a screen reader.
- kls 15y ago
  All of the major screen readers support content added to the DOM dynamically. They just watch particular events to know when and where to look, you have to ensure you are updating the DOM in a manner that they understand.
  - bmelton 15y ago
    Perhaps my knowledge is dated then. Thanks for the correction. Do you know of anywhere I can learn more?
    - kls 15y ago
      This is a dated article but it does give a good overview of how the screen readers work, some items have been improved in the screen readers since 08 but for the most part it is a good starting point http://northtemple.com/2008/10/07/javascript-and-screen-readers http://northtemple.com/2008/10/07/javascript-and-screen-read... also this is a good stack overflow conversation on getting the readers to read dynamic content http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3670570/getting-screen-reader-to-read-new-content-added-with-javascript http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3670570/getting-screen-re... and finally a little more bland but still containing a lot of good info the wai-aria specification http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/ http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/ . Also look at Dojo in my opinion they have the most advanced accessibility library out of all of the toolkits.
- VMG 15y ago
  If that is the case, those screen readers are broken.