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To get into exact numbers, it starts to depend on what exactly is meant by "accessibility". For simplicity's sake, let's take supporting screen reading software

To get into exact numbers, it starts to depend on what exactly is meant by "accessibility". For simplicity's sake, let's take supporting screen reading software. What % of the population uses a screenreader? If we assume that every blind user uses one, then the slice is about 2.4%. According to CanIUse, that's a similar percentage to the share of users who use browsers that don't support Flexbox. Have you used Flexbox recently? If so, you've excluded a similar slice of your potential user base. And, just like with ignoring flexbox, you can of course code around this. I've actually written SPAs with screen reader support, and it's a pain. Advocates will tell you that if you just follow the WAI-ARIA standard, it'll work seamlessly! But no -- in practice, each screen reader is like a mini-IE6; they all deviate from the standards in strange and unpredictable ways.

squigz 3y ago
> To get into exact numbers, it starts to depend on what exactly is meant by "accessibility". For simplicity's sake, let's take supporting screen reading software. What % of the population uses a screenreader? If we assume that every blind user uses one, then the slice is about 2.4%. Ignoring the fact that this alone represents a small slice of a larger pie, 2.4% still doesn't seem insignificant to me - that's nearly 8 million people in America alone. In any case, that answers my first question - now how much higher would that number need to be for it to be significant to you?
- infotainment 3y ago
  What percentage was it when everyone collectively decided to stop supporting IE6? 20%? To me it’s less of an absolute percentage and more of a function of how much extra effort needs to go into it, and whether the usability of the rest of the product needs to suffer. I’ve seen potentially useful features nixed because they can’t be made fully compatible with JAWS, which seems silly to me.

squigz 3y ago

> To get into exact numbers, it starts to depend on what exactly is meant by "accessibility". For simplicity's sake, let's take supporting screen reading software. What % of the population uses a screenreader? If we assume that every blind user uses one, then the slice is about 2.4%. Ignoring the fact that this alone represents a small slice of a larger pie, 2.4% still doesn't seem insignificant to me - that's nearly 8 million people in America alone. In any case, that answers my first question - now how much higher would that number need to be for it to be significant to you?

infotainment 3y ago
What percentage was it when everyone collectively decided to stop supporting IE6? 20%? To me it’s less of an absolute percentage and more of a function of how much extra effort needs to go into it, and whether the usability of the rest of the product needs to suffer. I’ve seen potentially useful features nixed because they can’t be made fully compatible with JAWS, which seems silly to me.