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Accessibility: Don't use color in your paintings because there are color blind people. Thankfully, the other root comments here have all of the alternative sug

Accessibility: Don't use color in your paintings because there are color blind people. Thankfully, the other root comments here have all of the alternative suggestions. The theme of which is Don't blame the author because the [accessibility] tool is broken. So I hope you can forgive me for not enumerating them again. But I still want to take the alternative stance and assert you should use unicode in a previously novel way. Worry more about how you want to express yourself, and less about being well understood by everyone. Does being fancy here mean that it will be harder for some people to process and understand your message? Yes! But if that's a good thing or a bad thing should be reserved, exclusively for you to decide. The author chooses to restrict information, the site they used to generate the text. Because you can't be trusted to take their advice. And the chance that the person reading your text might be visually impaired, and the screen reader they use might choke on that text, is more important than what you want, or how you want to express yourself. I reject this idea. I wonder how they'd feel about upsidedown text, in an attempt to artistically convey the author's state of mind where they themselves feel upsidedown. I do agree with the author on the point that you should make any messages you wish to convey, as easy as possible for any one to receive them. But never at the expense of the message, or the art you choose to give your ideas. There are people who will never be able to understand you, and there will be people who choose to misunderstand you. And there will be people who tell you how you must express yourself, and it's seemingly always to make them more comfortable. Sometimes it's ok to ignore them, and sometimes that's even the responsible thing to do.

perching_aix 2y ago
This will be a shocker I'm sure, but I think the demonstration (and the article in general) is for those who are receptive (or at least are choosing to be receptive) to this issue, and may not be aware. Not entirely sure why you think the assertion of your own opinion over the supposed assertion of another's is any better by the way.
- grayhatter 2y ago
  > Not entirely sure why you think the assertion of your own opinion over the supposed assertion of another's is any better by the way. I don't think my opinion is better. I'm disagreeing with the take that it's never a good idea to do something fancy. I think the assertion the article makes, which from my read can be reduced to: > you're wrong if you care about fancy text more than you care about screen readers Is problematic because, generously it's too simplistic. The author feels empowered to tell others they're wrong. So I want to do the same; because using things in weird ways they were never expected is the hacker ethos. And I think the world would be improved by more people coming up with more fun things, or doing things just because they're cool. We need fewer people who tell others they're wrong for doing something fun, and more people who do things because they're fun. In other words; because this problem can be fixed by improving screen readers, we shouldn't fix it by reducing the amount of cool shit people can do. > This will be a shocker I'm sure, but I think the demonstration [...] to this issue, and may not be aware. I'm not shocked, I simply don't agree. The author was able to write it as a suggestion, and make the argument using "should" but chose to assert it as an affirmative responsibility.
  - perching_aix 2y ago
    > I don't think my opinion is better. Not what I was suggesting either. I was talking about your assertion of it. To be more explicit, what you're doing is > The author feels empowered to tell others they're wrong. So I want to do the same; a tit-for-tat. If you claim that asserting a preference or an opinion is wrong (which I'd agree with), you were then at fault for doing the exact same thing. And just like the author, you merely felt justified to act that way, and would have been able to make do otherwise, but chose not to.
    - grayhatter 2y ago
      > And just like the author, you merely felt justified to act that way, and would have been able to make do otherwise, but chose not to. I'm not arguing for tit-for-tat. I think it's dumb. I took the affirmative stance I did, only to match the tone of the article. Adding the same absurdity to the counter point. I think we're both equally wrong for taking an unnuanced stance. The author and I both took stances that exclude important nuance. I was partially hoping partially expecting the remainder of what I said would come across. That idea being, options are better, warnings are better, absolutes are problematic. > The author feels empowered to tell others they're wrong. So I want to do the same; It would have been better for me to say "So I guess I'm required to do the same here". I'd much rather just suggest options, you can tell because I said as much > But if that's a good thing or a bad thing should be reserved, exclusively for you to decide. I don't want to make your decisions for you. Some of the authors points are compelling, I don't want anyone to die because they missed the tsunami warning either. But I find their specific arguments here needlessly restrictive. They're not warning, or reminding. They're saying your social media posts are wrong if you don't do it this way, and accusing the author of being irresponsible. Something *do* need to be easily readable, but that important nuance wasn't included in the article, just like I didn't include how tsunami warning without a doubt, need to be as accessible as possible.
reaperducer 2y ago
But if that's a good thing or a bad thing should be reserved, exclusively for you to decide. Target had to pay $6,000,000 because of accessibility problems with its web site. I sure hope you're not in a position to make decisions about your company's web site.
- extra88 2y ago
  To be clear, Target had to pay a lot of money to disagree about what U.S. law requires. It would have been cheaper to fix their accessibility bugs and even cheaper to build with accessibility in mind in the first place.
  - grayhatter 2y ago
    It absolutely would have been cheaper! But cheaper or not, target still should have. There's no ethical reason for a large corporate website to be inaccessible.
- grayhatter 2y ago
  > There are people who will never be able to understand you, and there will be people who choose to misunderstand you. I appreciate in your haste to be mad about something, you helped me prove my point. I was talking about places where you'd reasonably prefer artistic expression, not large corporate websites. Given different circumstances, I would make different decisions.
rs186 2y ago
You might want to educate yourself about the history of accessibility, the rationale behind many of the design decisions, and generally how accessibility works. The comment is so ridiculously wrong I don't know where to start. Please, feed the comment to ChatGPT and ask it to explain to you how things work.
shakna 2y ago
As someone who is forced to use accessibility software - please don't just punch me in the face for funsies. Yes, most accessibility software sucks. However, translating intent is harder than translating text. It is not always reasonable to transliterate, and knowing when you should is effectively undecideable. Most accessibility software is more concerned with stability, and the huge number of devices that they need to work with. If your keyboard suddenly decided to be a T9 with autocorrect on everything you interact with, it would likely result in anger. I am not simply reading your information in a different way. The intent of the information is also conveyed in another way. I don't know if it's a link, unless you tell me. I cannot tell if you're using Greek symbols for a mathematic equation or for typesetting, until you tell me. Use the standards. It works for both of us, and is less work.
gblargg 2y ago
You don't just prevent accessibility software from reading it, you likely stop most software from reading it: spell checkers, search engines, things that read it aloud (which anyone can benefit from), AI. If you want your message to get less attention, this is a good way.

perching_aix 2y ago

This will be a shocker I'm sure, but I think the demonstration (and the article in general) is for those who are receptive (or at least are choosing to be receptive) to this issue, and may not be aware. Not entirely sure why you think the assertion of your own opinion over the supposed assertion of another's is any better by the way.

grayhatter 2y ago
> Not entirely sure why you think the assertion of your own opinion over the supposed assertion of another's is any better by the way. I don't think my opinion is better. I'm disagreeing with the take that it's never a good idea to do something fancy. I think the assertion the article makes, which from my read can be reduced to: > you're wrong if you care about fancy text more than you care about screen readers Is problematic because, generously it's too simplistic. The author feels empowered to tell others they're wrong. So I want to do the same; because using things in weird ways they were never expected is the hacker ethos. And I think the world would be improved by more people coming up with more fun things, or doing things just because they're cool. We need fewer people who tell others they're wrong for doing something fun, and more people who do things because they're fun. In other words; because this problem can be fixed by improving screen readers, we shouldn't fix it by reducing the amount of cool shit people can do. > This will be a shocker I'm sure, but I think the demonstration [...] to this issue, and may not be aware. I'm not shocked, I simply don't agree. The author was able to write it as a suggestion, and make the argument using "should" but chose to assert it as an affirmative responsibility.
- perching_aix 2y ago
  > I don't think my opinion is better. Not what I was suggesting either. I was talking about your assertion of it. To be more explicit, what you're doing is > The author feels empowered to tell others they're wrong. So I want to do the same; a tit-for-tat. If you claim that asserting a preference or an opinion is wrong (which I'd agree with), you were then at fault for doing the exact same thing. And just like the author, you merely felt justified to act that way, and would have been able to make do otherwise, but chose not to.
  - grayhatter 2y ago
    > And just like the author, you merely felt justified to act that way, and would have been able to make do otherwise, but chose not to. I'm not arguing for tit-for-tat. I think it's dumb. I took the affirmative stance I did, only to match the tone of the article. Adding the same absurdity to the counter point. I think we're both equally wrong for taking an unnuanced stance. The author and I both took stances that exclude important nuance. I was partially hoping partially expecting the remainder of what I said would come across. That idea being, options are better, warnings are better, absolutes are problematic. > The author feels empowered to tell others they're wrong. So I want to do the same; It would have been better for me to say "So I guess I'm required to do the same here". I'd much rather just suggest options, you can tell because I said as much > But if that's a good thing or a bad thing should be reserved, exclusively for you to decide. I don't want to make your decisions for you. Some of the authors points are compelling, I don't want anyone to die because they missed the tsunami warning either. But I find their specific arguments here needlessly restrictive. They're not warning, or reminding. They're saying your social media posts are wrong if you don't do it this way, and accusing the author of being irresponsible. Something *do* need to be easily readable, but that important nuance wasn't included in the article, just like I didn't include how tsunami warning without a doubt, need to be as accessible as possible.

reaperducer 2y ago

But if that's a good thing or a bad thing should be reserved, exclusively for you to decide. Target had to pay $6,000,000 because of accessibility problems with its web site. I sure hope you're not in a position to make decisions about your company's web site.

extra88 2y ago
To be clear, Target had to pay a lot of money to disagree about what U.S. law requires. It would have been cheaper to fix their accessibility bugs and even cheaper to build with accessibility in mind in the first place.
- grayhatter 2y ago
  It absolutely would have been cheaper! But cheaper or not, target still should have. There's no ethical reason for a large corporate website to be inaccessible.
grayhatter 2y ago
> There are people who will never be able to understand you, and there will be people who choose to misunderstand you. I appreciate in your haste to be mad about something, you helped me prove my point. I was talking about places where you'd reasonably prefer artistic expression, not large corporate websites. Given different circumstances, I would make different decisions.

rs186 2y ago

You might want to educate yourself about the history of accessibility, the rationale behind many of the design decisions, and generally how accessibility works. The comment is so ridiculously wrong I don't know where to start. Please, feed the comment to ChatGPT and ask it to explain to you how things work.

shakna 2y ago

As someone who is forced to use accessibility software - please don't just punch me in the face for funsies. Yes, most accessibility software sucks. However, translating intent is harder than translating text. It is not always reasonable to transliterate, and knowing when you should is effectively undecideable. Most accessibility software is more concerned with stability, and the huge number of devices that they need to work with. If your keyboard suddenly decided to be a T9 with autocorrect on everything you interact with, it would likely result in anger. I am not simply reading your information in a different way. The intent of the information is also conveyed in another way. I don't know if it's a link, unless you tell me. I cannot tell if you're using Greek symbols for a mathematic equation or for typesetting, until you tell me. Use the standards. It works for both of us, and is less work.

gblargg 2y ago

You don't just prevent accessibility software from reading it, you likely stop most software from reading it: spell checkers, search engines, things that read it aloud (which anyone can benefit from), AI. If you want your message to get less attention, this is a good way.