4 ms·

I had to keep accessibility in mind a lot in my previous job (web development for a university). The thing that I consistently found was that, the more accessib

by gramie 1mo ago

I had to keep accessibility in mind a lot in my previous job (web development for a university). The thing that I consistently found was that, the more accessible a website was, the better the experience for everyone, not just people with disabilities.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
phatskat 1mo ago
I 100% agree. I've been working on a component library rebuild at work and accessibility is a key focus, granted I don't think that would be the case if some of our contracts didn't mandate it but it's fiiiiiine I'm someone who enjoys this kind of work, especially when the target is a stylized drop down - I got to spend a week with the MDN page for the ARIA combobox open, trudging through all of the ins and outs of keyboard accessibility and I know I'm still missing a couple things (typing when the control is focused but not open, for example), and having clearly defined specs is something we don't seem to get a lot in webdev
- rhdunn 1mo ago
  My go to when implementing custom controls that can't be achieved in native HTML is the ARIA Patterns (https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/ https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/) site. That has clear documentation on the roles, states, and keyboard interactions for common UI controls. I've used it for things like a search bar with an autocomplete dropdown to get the keyboard interaction right.
PunchyHamster 1mo ago
that's generally the case with many accessibility features, not just for websites
keerthiko 1mo ago
yep, the curb cut effect is a well-researched and documented phenomenon [0] across ADA development in all aspects of the world. accessibility work isn't just about making things possible for folks with disabilities, it's about making things better for everyone. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect
- TomatoCo 1mo ago
  Another way to think of this is that everybody occasionally needs to do something unusual. But some people, due to their life circumstances, always need to do something unusual. And making things better for the always-odd folk is also a positive to the occasionally-odd folk. Which like, we're all eventually gonna be odd folk! That's what age does to us. But we should understand these accommodations as being a net positive, not a cost, to society.
  - gregdeon 1mo ago
    Yep. In accessibility research, they call these "situational disabilities". When you need to open a door with your arms full of groceries, you aren't so different from someone who is never able to open a door. Accommodations that help people with permanent disabilities also help other people in the right situations, too.
    - djaro 1mo ago
      My touchpad broke and I couldnt download the touchpad driver to fix it on the spot because there was no way to get to the download button with tab and enter, you had to click it.
      - opan 1mo ago
        That's a funny example, reminds me of how often fresh Windows 7 or older installs were missing the ethernet driver so you had to move stuff over on a flash drive to get started really setting stuff up. In your situation, a couple possible solutions come to mind. 1) turn on "mouse keys" which lets you use the numpad to move the mouse and click, 2) a vim addon for the browser (e.g. vimperator or tridactyl) likely could've clicked the button via the hints mode. It's in the past now so maybe these wouldn't have worked or you didn't know, of course, just fun to think of what I would've done.
    - apothegm 1mo ago
      Yup. Or people with temporary disabilities — who have simply broken limb or had a surgery. Most places are hellish to navigate on crutches. Heavy doors alone make so many places nearly inaccessible, and that’s before you even get to stairs.
jaggederest 1mo ago
Some of the things we take for granted in UI/UX originated that way, like automatic hamburger menu hide/show (for very large zoom) and "scroll to content/top" buttons for screenreaders, which, if you've ever tried to read a recipe online are pretty critical. Captions on videos are also like that, although there you might share blame to them for enabling the poor sound mastering on things like, legendarily, Tenet, perhaps.
- Velocifyer 1mo ago
  What are the advantage of “scroll to content/top” buttons over <main> for screen readers? I think that the use of those buttons is for when the CSS fails to load.
  - jaggederest 1mo ago
    It's essentially the same thing, but a lot of the time people will add a sr-only button at the very top that just goes straight there, and one at the bottom if the screen reader gets stuck in the footer nav, as well. Depending on which screenreader people use they sometimes only work on the actual hydrated markup, so <main> isn't always visible the way you'd expect. It's been a while since I did a11y tho so I'm probably hopelessly out of date.
  - miki123211 1mo ago
    Such buttons are more visible to (screen reader) users who navigate the web exclusively with arrow keys. Landmarks are important, but to navigate by landmark, you need to be experienced enough to know the right quicknav keys. Some beginner users might not be.
- miki123211 1mo ago
  "Scroll to content" doesn't mean what you think it means. It doesn't scroll to the "useful" part of an article. It doesn't skip past the introduction / filler / two pages of "this is how my grandma used to make it." The only thing it does is getting you past the top navbar and such, and moving focus straight to the beginning of the article.
madeofpalk 1mo ago
That's because at the end of the day: - accessibility is just usability. all it is is making sure your product is as usable by as many people as possible. - it's a myth that "people with disabilities" are some other that excludes you, and 'accessibility' or assistive technologies only benefits other people. Everyone is only temporarily 'abled'. You need to use prescription glasses to comfortable read a computer screen? You're a parent trying to watch some TV while getting your child to sleep? All benefit from assistive technologies.
- Xirdus 1mo ago
  > accessibility is just usability. all it is is making sure your product is as usable by as many people as possible. Not always. There are things that increase usability for fully abled people but decrease it for disabled people. Color-coding is a common one. Another is using smaller font size to make more info visible at once, or advanced touch gestures that can be accidentally triggered by shaky hands. Then there are accessibility features that actively harm fully abled users, like sticky keys or screen readers that automatically follow focused UI elements.
  - umpalumpaaa 1mo ago
    Colors should be an OS feature. On iOS and macOS you can remap colors globally and it works in all native apps. There are presets fire the common cases: red/green issues, color blindness etc and you can make your own. This has its limitations though eg if you are not able to distinguish at least 5 or so colors… any colors.
    - rhdunn 1mo ago
      That's why you don't just use colour for identification. E.g. include a warning icon next to a button/element in addition to using a warning colour.
      - Cthulhu_ 1mo ago
        Nor just shape, so a warning icon + text message.
zelphirkalt 1mo ago
Additionally, I found, that simply sticking to web standards, instead of reimplementing everything in JavaScript, goes a long way towards accessibility.
- mghackerlady 1mo ago
  Funny how that works. It's almost as if the web was designed to be a tool for semi-interactive documents instead JVM-esque WODE environment
Cthulhu_ 1mo ago
Exactly; consider that only a percentage of users will actually be sitting at a desktop system using your application. Most people will visit your website on a mobile device, and a percentage of that will be in weird lighting conditions trying to operate the thing with just one hand. As just an example, and that's the people considered abled - anything that isn't the hip startup of the week aimed at 15-25 year olds will need to consider e.g. eyesight issues on top of everything else. Anyway, it's not even an option anymore, under the European Accessibility Act, government and (since last year) public services (websites, apps, appliances, etc) all need to be accessible; for websites this means implementing WCAG 2.something to level AA, which includes things like minimum contrast requirements, captioned videos, and increasing font size without losing information. And it's often considered an afterthought because by and large, designers and developers are relatively young, 20-40 some year olds working on Macbooks with 4K displays. Some may be wearing glasses but broadly speaking that's the extent of their disabilities.
shuwix 1mo ago
[flagged]
WhyNotHugo 1mo ago
This is true in other fields too. Wheel-chair ramps are used by people with baby strollers. Subtitles work for deaf people, those who can't understand the spoken language, or simple folks in situations where someone is sleeping next to them. Pretty much every accessibility-oriented feature ends up helping out people beyond the original audience.
- 1718627440 1mo ago
  In traffic planning everyone who is not a healthy, athletic, young man without baggage is considered disabled.
- sdeframond 1mo ago
  Baby strollers are not accounted for enough ! One might wonder (wrongly) why everyone should care about the special and expensive needs of a few (or old) people when designing public spaces. But a majority will actually need to use these spaces with a baby stroller. Not a few. Baby strollers are a driving power of our society! Enable them!
  - tonyarkles 1mo ago
    And to keep the loop going, stroller-accessible spaces are also walker-accessible spaces and cart-accessible spaces. Worked at a computer store in the early 00s. Our rented retail space had a wheelchair ramp and there were a few elderly regulars who would show up with a desktop PC in the basket of their rolling walkers for repairs. More than once they thanked us for having the ramp because the computer itself was way too heavy for them to carry from the parking lot.
  - apothegm 1mo ago
    Not to mention luggage. I find it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence that rolling luggage became common shortly after curb cuts and wheelchair ramps did.
    - mhb 1mo ago
      Really? Both strollers and wheels on luggage are pretty nice to have even if you have to somehow negotiate curbs. So, I think it is a coincidence.

by gramie 1mo ago

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

phatskat 1mo ago

I 100% agree. I've been working on a component library rebuild at work and accessibility is a key focus, granted I don't think that would be the case if some of our contracts didn't mandate it but it's fiiiiiine I'm someone who enjoys this kind of work, especially when the target is a stylized drop down - I got to spend a week with the MDN page for the ARIA combobox open, trudging through all of the ins and outs of keyboard accessibility and I know I'm still missing a couple things (typing when the control is focused but not open, for example), and having clearly defined specs is something we don't seem to get a lot in webdev

rhdunn 1mo ago
My go to when implementing custom controls that can't be achieved in native HTML is the ARIA Patterns (https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/ https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/) site. That has clear documentation on the roles, states, and keyboard interactions for common UI controls. I've used it for things like a search bar with an autocomplete dropdown to get the keyboard interaction right.

PunchyHamster 1mo ago

that's generally the case with many accessibility features, not just for websites

keerthiko 1mo ago

yep, the curb cut effect is a well-researched and documented phenomenon [0] across ADA development in all aspects of the world. accessibility work isn't just about making things possible for folks with disabilities, it's about making things better for everyone. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect

TomatoCo 1mo ago
Another way to think of this is that everybody occasionally needs to do something unusual. But some people, due to their life circumstances, always need to do something unusual. And making things better for the always-odd folk is also a positive to the occasionally-odd folk. Which like, we're all eventually gonna be odd folk! That's what age does to us. But we should understand these accommodations as being a net positive, not a cost, to society.
- gregdeon 1mo ago
  Yep. In accessibility research, they call these "situational disabilities". When you need to open a door with your arms full of groceries, you aren't so different from someone who is never able to open a door. Accommodations that help people with permanent disabilities also help other people in the right situations, too.
  - djaro 1mo ago
    My touchpad broke and I couldnt download the touchpad driver to fix it on the spot because there was no way to get to the download button with tab and enter, you had to click it.
    - opan 1mo ago
      That's a funny example, reminds me of how often fresh Windows 7 or older installs were missing the ethernet driver so you had to move stuff over on a flash drive to get started really setting stuff up. In your situation, a couple possible solutions come to mind. 1) turn on "mouse keys" which lets you use the numpad to move the mouse and click, 2) a vim addon for the browser (e.g. vimperator or tridactyl) likely could've clicked the button via the hints mode. It's in the past now so maybe these wouldn't have worked or you didn't know, of course, just fun to think of what I would've done.
  - apothegm 1mo ago
    Yup. Or people with temporary disabilities — who have simply broken limb or had a surgery. Most places are hellish to navigate on crutches. Heavy doors alone make so many places nearly inaccessible, and that’s before you even get to stairs.

jaggederest 1mo ago

Some of the things we take for granted in UI/UX originated that way, like automatic hamburger menu hide/show (for very large zoom) and "scroll to content/top" buttons for screenreaders, which, if you've ever tried to read a recipe online are pretty critical. Captions on videos are also like that, although there you might share blame to them for enabling the poor sound mastering on things like, legendarily, Tenet, perhaps.

Velocifyer 1mo ago
What are the advantage of “scroll to content/top” buttons over <main> for screen readers? I think that the use of those buttons is for when the CSS fails to load.
- jaggederest 1mo ago
  It's essentially the same thing, but a lot of the time people will add a sr-only button at the very top that just goes straight there, and one at the bottom if the screen reader gets stuck in the footer nav, as well. Depending on which screenreader people use they sometimes only work on the actual hydrated markup, so <main> isn't always visible the way you'd expect. It's been a while since I did a11y tho so I'm probably hopelessly out of date.
- miki123211 1mo ago
  Such buttons are more visible to (screen reader) users who navigate the web exclusively with arrow keys. Landmarks are important, but to navigate by landmark, you need to be experienced enough to know the right quicknav keys. Some beginner users might not be.
miki123211 1mo ago
"Scroll to content" doesn't mean what you think it means. It doesn't scroll to the "useful" part of an article. It doesn't skip past the introduction / filler / two pages of "this is how my grandma used to make it." The only thing it does is getting you past the top navbar and such, and moving focus straight to the beginning of the article.

madeofpalk 1mo ago

That's because at the end of the day: - accessibility is just usability. all it is is making sure your product is as usable by as many people as possible. - it's a myth that "people with disabilities" are some other that excludes you, and 'accessibility' or assistive technologies only benefits other people. Everyone is only temporarily 'abled'. You need to use prescription glasses to comfortable read a computer screen? You're a parent trying to watch some TV while getting your child to sleep? All benefit from assistive technologies.

Xirdus 1mo ago
> accessibility is just usability. all it is is making sure your product is as usable by as many people as possible. Not always. There are things that increase usability for fully abled people but decrease it for disabled people. Color-coding is a common one. Another is using smaller font size to make more info visible at once, or advanced touch gestures that can be accidentally triggered by shaky hands. Then there are accessibility features that actively harm fully abled users, like sticky keys or screen readers that automatically follow focused UI elements.
- umpalumpaaa 1mo ago
  Colors should be an OS feature. On iOS and macOS you can remap colors globally and it works in all native apps. There are presets fire the common cases: red/green issues, color blindness etc and you can make your own. This has its limitations though eg if you are not able to distinguish at least 5 or so colors… any colors.
  - rhdunn 1mo ago
    That's why you don't just use colour for identification. E.g. include a warning icon next to a button/element in addition to using a warning colour.
    - Cthulhu_ 1mo ago
      Nor just shape, so a warning icon + text message.

zelphirkalt 1mo ago

Additionally, I found, that simply sticking to web standards, instead of reimplementing everything in JavaScript, goes a long way towards accessibility.

mghackerlady 1mo ago
Funny how that works. It's almost as if the web was designed to be a tool for semi-interactive documents instead JVM-esque WODE environment

Cthulhu_ 1mo ago

Exactly; consider that only a percentage of users will actually be sitting at a desktop system using your application. Most people will visit your website on a mobile device, and a percentage of that will be in weird lighting conditions trying to operate the thing with just one hand. As just an example, and that's the people considered abled - anything that isn't the hip startup of the week aimed at 15-25 year olds will need to consider e.g. eyesight issues on top of everything else. Anyway, it's not even an option anymore, under the European Accessibility Act, government and (since last year) public services (websites, apps, appliances, etc) all need to be accessible; for websites this means implementing WCAG 2.something to level AA, which includes things like minimum contrast requirements, captioned videos, and increasing font size without losing information. And it's often considered an afterthought because by and large, designers and developers are relatively young, 20-40 some year olds working on Macbooks with 4K displays. Some may be wearing glasses but broadly speaking that's the extent of their disabilities.

shuwix 1mo ago

[flagged]

WhyNotHugo 1mo ago

This is true in other fields too. Wheel-chair ramps are used by people with baby strollers. Subtitles work for deaf people, those who can't understand the spoken language, or simple folks in situations where someone is sleeping next to them. Pretty much every accessibility-oriented feature ends up helping out people beyond the original audience.

1718627440 1mo ago
In traffic planning everyone who is not a healthy, athletic, young man without baggage is considered disabled.
sdeframond 1mo ago
Baby strollers are not accounted for enough ! One might wonder (wrongly) why everyone should care about the special and expensive needs of a few (or old) people when designing public spaces. But a majority will actually need to use these spaces with a baby stroller. Not a few. Baby strollers are a driving power of our society! Enable them!
- tonyarkles 1mo ago
  And to keep the loop going, stroller-accessible spaces are also walker-accessible spaces and cart-accessible spaces. Worked at a computer store in the early 00s. Our rented retail space had a wheelchair ramp and there were a few elderly regulars who would show up with a desktop PC in the basket of their rolling walkers for repairs. More than once they thanked us for having the ramp because the computer itself was way too heavy for them to carry from the parking lot.
- apothegm 1mo ago
  Not to mention luggage. I find it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence that rolling luggage became common shortly after curb cuts and wheelchair ramps did.
  - mhb 1mo ago
    Really? Both strollers and wheels on luggage are pretty nice to have even if you have to somehow negotiate curbs. So, I think it is a coincidence.