5 ms·

What I have learned after years of working with accessibility experts is that screen readers are largely incapable pieces of junk that need to be lead around ma

by donatj 1y ago

What I have learned after years of working with accessibility experts is that screen readers are largely incapable pieces of junk that need to be lead around manually. They don't try to be helpful, they only do exactly what they are told. Frankly I think there's rear space for interruption here, particularly with AI.

snickerdoodle12 1y ago
The hilarious part is that we somehow wound up in a situation where the screen readers are useless pieces of crap but instead of fixing those every developer making a website is held responsible instead.
- rpd9803 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
    I'm embarrassed for the screen reader software for needing so much help.
    - jodrellblank 1y ago
      If you serve your UI as out-of-order HTML content abusing tables for browser layout, if you merge broken fragments of mismatched XHTML from a content management system to cobble a page together on the fly, if you hide items behind burger menus, if you make interactivity from CSS and minified Javascript to visually look like input boxes and buttons instead of using standard buttons, if you add overlays and blocks to stop people selecting or copying text, if you care nothing about tab order and keyboard shortcuts and image alt text, if you reflow text around images, if you name CSS identifiers with no semantic meaning, if you mix in arbitrary advertising and tracking and framework session state, why is a screenreader "a piece of crap" for not being able to magically infer a human interpretation of the page? Why is it embarrassing to need to code against standardised accessibility interfaces so that other tools using those interfaces can function? Is it embarrassing to have to code against a database or filesystem interface to persist data, or a graphics interface to show pictures?
      - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
        My eyes, search engines and LLMs manage just fine. Screen readers are the odd ones out, and they haven't evolved in over a decade.
        jodrellblank 1y ago
        [flagged]
        snickerdoodle12 1y ago
        Oh look, personal attacks. Good argument!
        jodrellblank 1y ago
        [flagged]
        SoftTalker 1y ago
        The sad reality is that screen readers have a very small market. There isn't a lot of money to be made so not much innovation happens. Maybe with LLMs there will be a new approach. It's something they might actually be good for.
        snickerdoodle12 1y ago
        Right, and the insane part is that instead of this small market improving itself the burder is instead shifted to everyone else, even mandated by laws.
  - rhdunn 1y ago
    It's not adding roles/alt tags/etc. that's the issue. It's finding out that a screen reader doesn't support the ARIA markup (from the ARIA spec) that you are trying to use [1]. -- For example, using aria-describedby on an img doesn't work on most browser + screen reader combinations [2]. [1] https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/aria/ https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/aria/ [2] https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/labelling/img-aria-describedby/ https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/labelling/i...
rpd9803 1y ago
The reason JAWS and Voiceover are to widely used is not because no one else has tried. I'd reckon 90% of 'accessiblity' software was written by a sighted or hearing dev that thought they had an idea that would be 'helpful'.
- devinprater 1y ago
  Most blind people don't even use a Mac, they use JAWS or NVDA on Windows.
chowells 1y ago
> They don't try to be helpful, they only do exactly what they are told. This is how software should work. Attempting to be "helpful" usually makes things worse. Doing exactly what it's told makes it predictable and usable. Just look at how much of the HTML 5 spec is a nightmare of parsing rules for handling malformed SGML. Look at how it got there - all the invocations of Postel's law justifying attempting to handle malformed input in "helpful" ways, until things were eventually such a compatibility nightmare that a new spec was created to give precise rules for parsing every single input the same way. "Helpful" was specified away, because it was so broken. Now if only screen readers provided consistency in following rules, too. They're not in a great state, but your attempted solution is worse.
ghusto 1y ago
I think the AI argument is muddying the waters. I don't think I'm being arrogant in saying it's not that complicated a problem. Simply either read the surrounding text (possibly by additional instruction) or the URL. I can't fathom how that's a difficult task.

by donatj 1y ago

snickerdoodle12 1y ago

The hilarious part is that we somehow wound up in a situation where the screen readers are useless pieces of crap but instead of fixing those every developer making a website is held responsible instead.

rpd9803 1y ago
[flagged]
- snickerdoodle12 1y ago
  I'm embarrassed for the screen reader software for needing so much help.
  - jodrellblank 1y ago
    If you serve your UI as out-of-order HTML content abusing tables for browser layout, if you merge broken fragments of mismatched XHTML from a content management system to cobble a page together on the fly, if you hide items behind burger menus, if you make interactivity from CSS and minified Javascript to visually look like input boxes and buttons instead of using standard buttons, if you add overlays and blocks to stop people selecting or copying text, if you care nothing about tab order and keyboard shortcuts and image alt text, if you reflow text around images, if you name CSS identifiers with no semantic meaning, if you mix in arbitrary advertising and tracking and framework session state, why is a screenreader "a piece of crap" for not being able to magically infer a human interpretation of the page? Why is it embarrassing to need to code against standardised accessibility interfaces so that other tools using those interfaces can function? Is it embarrassing to have to code against a database or filesystem interface to persist data, or a graphics interface to show pictures?
    - snickerdoodle12 1y ago
      My eyes, search engines and LLMs manage just fine. Screen readers are the odd ones out, and they haven't evolved in over a decade.
      - jodrellblank 1y ago
        [flagged]
        snickerdoodle12 1y ago
        Oh look, personal attacks. Good argument!
        jodrellblank 1y ago
        [flagged]
      - SoftTalker 1y ago
        The sad reality is that screen readers have a very small market. There isn't a lot of money to be made so not much innovation happens. Maybe with LLMs there will be a new approach. It's something they might actually be good for.
        snickerdoodle12 1y ago
        Right, and the insane part is that instead of this small market improving itself the burder is instead shifted to everyone else, even mandated by laws.
- rhdunn 1y ago
  It's not adding roles/alt tags/etc. that's the issue. It's finding out that a screen reader doesn't support the ARIA markup (from the ARIA spec) that you are trying to use [1]. -- For example, using aria-describedby on an img doesn't work on most browser + screen reader combinations [2]. [1] https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/aria/ https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/aria/ [2] https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/labelling/img-aria-describedby/ https://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen-readers/labelling/i...

rpd9803 1y ago

The reason JAWS and Voiceover are to widely used is not because no one else has tried. I'd reckon 90% of 'accessiblity' software was written by a sighted or hearing dev that thought they had an idea that would be 'helpful'.

devinprater 1y ago
Most blind people don't even use a Mac, they use JAWS or NVDA on Windows.

chowells 1y ago

> They don't try to be helpful, they only do exactly what they are told. This is how software should work. Attempting to be "helpful" usually makes things worse. Doing exactly what it's told makes it predictable and usable. Just look at how much of the HTML 5 spec is a nightmare of parsing rules for handling malformed SGML. Look at how it got there - all the invocations of Postel's law justifying attempting to handle malformed input in "helpful" ways, until things were eventually such a compatibility nightmare that a new spec was created to give precise rules for parsing every single input the same way. "Helpful" was specified away, because it was so broken. Now if only screen readers provided consistency in following rules, too. They're not in a great state, but your attempted solution is worse.

ghusto 1y ago

I think the AI argument is muddying the waters. I don't think I'm being arrogant in saying it's not that complicated a problem. Simply either read the surrounding text (possibly by additional instruction) or the URL. I can't fathom how that's a difficult task.