3 ms·

>1 in 6 people think your app is broken >16% of people have some kind of accessibility requirement 16% is 4 in 25 people, also no guarantee you'll be able to

>1 in 6 people think your app is broken >16% of people have some kind of accessibility requirement 16% is 4 in 25 people, also no guarantee you'll be able to accommodate their specific accessibility requirement, depending on the app, and depending on the requirement. That's not to say the app shouldn't be accessible, more that, you should think about when you spend the money to implement things like this, and how that money may best be spent to accommodate the highest number of people. Figure out who those people are, then figure out what your revenue growth would be if you captured those people, then compare those numbers to how much you'll have to spend to accommodate their needs. That's no different than any feature upgrade really. Where you'll likely arrive at is the same place many apps have, unfortunately, arrived at, which is to probably just get text scaling quasi working and leave it at that because anything more is throwing cash into a black hole.

yau8edq12i 3y ago
[flagged]
jnovek 3y ago
As a person who uses accessibility features on his devices, this attitude is why we depend on regulation to ensure that we (disabled people) can do stuff. No company implements accessibility features out of the kindness of their heart.
- nsxwolf 3y ago
  If I'm putting out a free app as a single developer, I don't have the time or money to do everything. If it becomes popular, I can use metrics to improve the accessibility situation. If government regulations are going to insist I have to put that investment in day 1, I'll just take up badminton or something.
  - edent 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - buzzerbetrayed 3y ago
      Bad analogy. Preparing food unhygienically is bad for everyone at the picnic. A more appropriate analogy is disallowing watermelon at the picnic because one person can't eat watermelon. > Please go play badminton. Love the irony of including this comment in a post about making your app inclusive
      - klyrs 3y ago
        >> Please go play badminton. > Love the irony of including this comment in a post about making your app inclusive Why is that ironic? There's a broad gap between being unable to use an app due to a disability, and unwilling to write apps that will be usable to people with disabilities. One is an immutable characteristic of a person, and the other is a personal choice to be calous. Inclusivity doesn't mean you can't kick people out for being jerks. And in this case, if I were to hire a developer for an app, and they were so dismissive of accessibility concerns, I would end their interview with abrupt and direct feedback and the law would be on my side.
      - edent 3y ago
        If your co-worker is allergic to peanuts, are you going to moan that you're not allowed to bring in your famous peanut brittle? No. You're going to be sensible and realise that excluding people or risking them harm isn't nice. And, yes, I'm with Popper. The "Paradox of tolerance" is real. It's OK to tell intolerant people that they're not welcome.
  - jnovek 3y ago
    I mean, isn't that kind of a false dichotomy, though? There's plenty of middle ground between "no required support" and "must fully support on day one". For example, the ADA doesn't require employers to accommodate disability needs until a business has 15 employees.
  - serial_dev 3y ago
    I disagree with this take, most app frameworks do accessibility mostly right out of the box, it's just most developers never enabled voice over in their life, so they keep modifying the UI and messing up accessibility out of ignorance. It's not that hard, and if every developer spent an afternoon looking into things, they'd realize how easy it is to get it right if the team is aware of it. I'd not mind if like developers need to go through security and privacy training, they'd also go through accessibility training. A little investment would go really far.
    - nsxwolf 3y ago
      If it's something like a game with a 100% from scratch engine I wrote, there's nothing at all out of the box.
      - madeofpalk 3y ago
        Is it something like a game with a 100% from scratch engine?
      - serial_dev 3y ago
        Sure, but I'm talking about Compose, Swift UI, Flutter, React Native, Ionic, etc, you know like how the majority of the apps are actually written. They all handle accessibility well, you just need to remember adding labels to your icon buttons, and you are good to go. If you don't reinvent the wheel thinking your buttons are soooo different that it needs to be rewritten from scratch, things just work.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    I honestly think that this is a good answer. If one doesn't want to do it right, they are better off doing something else. Of course, culture is a huge factor. The US wasn't built on "regulation, or else", it was built on "if you can, do". This makes business boom, but makes other concerns, like welfare, an afterthought. And it's up to debate which system is better to exist in. People dislike the rules, until it ends up benefiting them.
- jtriangle 3y ago
  I wouldn't say "no company", there do exist companies that are run by kind, thoughtful people. Never large companies granted, it seems the heart in something gets replaced by MBA grad nonsense past a certain size, but they very well do exist, and there's probably more of them than there are large companies that would just as soon put us all in a meat grinder if it helped their margins. It's part of why I've really tried to stay employed with smallish businesses, because they're more human.
- axus 3y ago
  The theory is that the companies would do it for the +14% growth from users with disabilities, the reality is that they'll spend the effort on other things instead, and that disabled users would suffer through it because they needed to use the website.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Has anyone cracked the nut of making accessible 3D modeling software? I haven't found anything in that vein and I'm curious if anyone's working on it.
jakey_bakey 3y ago
I hope that this article can do some small work in changing that perception! My apologies for the math inaccuracy is in the mail.
- jtriangle 3y ago
  I think that pointing out there are easy (read: cheap) ways of baking in accessibility is a valuable thing Jacob, and, there's certainly wisdom in baking some of that in as part of your development process. Nothing's worse than pushing something into alpha for QA and immediately having it tossed back to the dev team because they have to rework something obvious. Big morale hit all around. I wasn't really trying for pedantry, but, if the check's in the mail, thanks for 0.666% of a coffee ;)
codegeek 3y ago
There is a middle ground. There are Free widgets that you can install [0] that can add some accessibility features on top of any existing website/app. Not perfect but takes care of a lot of low hanging fruits. https://userway.org/get/ https://userway.org/get/
- rondini 3y ago
  I strongly discourage anyone to use such tools. More often than not they make the user experience even worse for users with disabilities, and they paint a huge target on your back that litigious users will take advantage of. The majority of a11y lawsuits target companies that use these overlays[1]. [1] https://www.accessibility.works/blog/avoid-accessibility-overlay-tools-toolbar-plugins/ https://www.accessibility.works/blog/avoid-accessibility-ove...
rondini 3y ago
1/6 is 4/24 or 16.6%, I don't see why we have to be so pedantic. That aside, the work of prioritizing accommodations is already done. Just read through the WCAG criteria, start with level A, then AA. They already determined what the most critical issues are to accommodate everyone who uses your app. I find it extremely callous to frame people's ability to use your product in terms of the revenue they have to offer you. A storefront has to build a ramp because everyone deserves basic human decency, not because they want wheelchair users to spend money inside.

yau8edq12i 3y ago

[flagged]

jnovek 3y ago

As a person who uses accessibility features on his devices, this attitude is why we depend on regulation to ensure that we (disabled people) can do stuff. No company implements accessibility features out of the kindness of their heart.

nsxwolf 3y ago
If I'm putting out a free app as a single developer, I don't have the time or money to do everything. If it becomes popular, I can use metrics to improve the accessibility situation. If government regulations are going to insist I have to put that investment in day 1, I'll just take up badminton or something.
- edent 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - buzzerbetrayed 3y ago
    Bad analogy. Preparing food unhygienically is bad for everyone at the picnic. A more appropriate analogy is disallowing watermelon at the picnic because one person can't eat watermelon. > Please go play badminton. Love the irony of including this comment in a post about making your app inclusive
    - klyrs 3y ago
      >> Please go play badminton. > Love the irony of including this comment in a post about making your app inclusive Why is that ironic? There's a broad gap between being unable to use an app due to a disability, and unwilling to write apps that will be usable to people with disabilities. One is an immutable characteristic of a person, and the other is a personal choice to be calous. Inclusivity doesn't mean you can't kick people out for being jerks. And in this case, if I were to hire a developer for an app, and they were so dismissive of accessibility concerns, I would end their interview with abrupt and direct feedback and the law would be on my side.
    - edent 3y ago
      If your co-worker is allergic to peanuts, are you going to moan that you're not allowed to bring in your famous peanut brittle? No. You're going to be sensible and realise that excluding people or risking them harm isn't nice. And, yes, I'm with Popper. The "Paradox of tolerance" is real. It's OK to tell intolerant people that they're not welcome.
- jnovek 3y ago
  I mean, isn't that kind of a false dichotomy, though? There's plenty of middle ground between "no required support" and "must fully support on day one". For example, the ADA doesn't require employers to accommodate disability needs until a business has 15 employees.
- serial_dev 3y ago
  I disagree with this take, most app frameworks do accessibility mostly right out of the box, it's just most developers never enabled voice over in their life, so they keep modifying the UI and messing up accessibility out of ignorance. It's not that hard, and if every developer spent an afternoon looking into things, they'd realize how easy it is to get it right if the team is aware of it. I'd not mind if like developers need to go through security and privacy training, they'd also go through accessibility training. A little investment would go really far.
  - nsxwolf 3y ago
    If it's something like a game with a 100% from scratch engine I wrote, there's nothing at all out of the box.
    - madeofpalk 3y ago
      Is it something like a game with a 100% from scratch engine?
    - serial_dev 3y ago
      Sure, but I'm talking about Compose, Swift UI, Flutter, React Native, Ionic, etc, you know like how the majority of the apps are actually written. They all handle accessibility well, you just need to remember adding labels to your icon buttons, and you are good to go. If you don't reinvent the wheel thinking your buttons are soooo different that it needs to be rewritten from scratch, things just work.
- npteljes 3y ago
  I honestly think that this is a good answer. If one doesn't want to do it right, they are better off doing something else. Of course, culture is a huge factor. The US wasn't built on "regulation, or else", it was built on "if you can, do". This makes business boom, but makes other concerns, like welfare, an afterthought. And it's up to debate which system is better to exist in. People dislike the rules, until it ends up benefiting them.
jtriangle 3y ago
I wouldn't say "no company", there do exist companies that are run by kind, thoughtful people. Never large companies granted, it seems the heart in something gets replaced by MBA grad nonsense past a certain size, but they very well do exist, and there's probably more of them than there are large companies that would just as soon put us all in a meat grinder if it helped their margins. It's part of why I've really tried to stay employed with smallish businesses, because they're more human.
axus 3y ago
The theory is that the companies would do it for the +14% growth from users with disabilities, the reality is that they'll spend the effort on other things instead, and that disabled users would suffer through it because they needed to use the website.
shadowgovt 3y ago
Has anyone cracked the nut of making accessible 3D modeling software? I haven't found anything in that vein and I'm curious if anyone's working on it.

jakey_bakey 3y ago

I hope that this article can do some small work in changing that perception! My apologies for the math inaccuracy is in the mail.

jtriangle 3y ago
I think that pointing out there are easy (read: cheap) ways of baking in accessibility is a valuable thing Jacob, and, there's certainly wisdom in baking some of that in as part of your development process. Nothing's worse than pushing something into alpha for QA and immediately having it tossed back to the dev team because they have to rework something obvious. Big morale hit all around. I wasn't really trying for pedantry, but, if the check's in the mail, thanks for 0.666% of a coffee ;)

codegeek 3y ago

There is a middle ground. There are Free widgets that you can install [0] that can add some accessibility features on top of any existing website/app. Not perfect but takes care of a lot of low hanging fruits. https://userway.org/get/ https://userway.org/get/

rondini 3y ago
I strongly discourage anyone to use such tools. More often than not they make the user experience even worse for users with disabilities, and they paint a huge target on your back that litigious users will take advantage of. The majority of a11y lawsuits target companies that use these overlays[1]. [1] https://www.accessibility.works/blog/avoid-accessibility-overlay-tools-toolbar-plugins/ https://www.accessibility.works/blog/avoid-accessibility-ove...

rondini 3y ago

1/6 is 4/24 or 16.6%, I don't see why we have to be so pedantic. That aside, the work of prioritizing accommodations is already done. Just read through the WCAG criteria, start with level A, then AA. They already determined what the most critical issues are to accommodate everyone who uses your app. I find it extremely callous to frame people's ability to use your product in terms of the revenue they have to offer you. A storefront has to build a ramp because everyone deserves basic human decency, not because they want wheelchair users to spend money inside.