> Don’t put the disabled in the position where the website itself takes extra steps just to be usable for them, old 90 year old grandma Betty with failing vision is never going to figure such things out and saying “lol just figure it out” isn’t good enough.
It's always funny when people get on their virtue bully pulpit and then immediately go to ageism. Nice work.
> The analogy I would make is actually round doorknobs vs door levers/handles. If you pay attention you will notice you don’t see doorknobs on new public buildings and that’s because of issues like arthritis. Yes somebody might aesthetically prefer doorknobs but that doesn’t justify their installation in something used by the general public. It’s fine for a PRIVATE website to be as inaccessible as you want, but not a public one.
So I as an independent developer am responsible for this in all of my public code? That's asinine. My home is catered to me, if people want to visit me in my home I am not going to change my door knobs, fix my windows, redo my concrete, etc so it can happen. It's mine and out of the charity of my heart I am letting other people use it if they need it.
Where do you draw the line? It sounds like you want FAANG to be the only game in town given they're probably the only people with the budget and bodies to fulfill all of your requirements. I don't see someone repackaging firefox as "firefox with accessibility", or using an add-on, as an undo burden on taking advantage of a service voluntarily provided, and most importantly does not compel you to use it.
I don't care about being accused of an -ism, I care about old people being able to use the internet. The ones I provide free IT services for are in the early stages of dementia. I bought such person a computer out of my own pocket with an extra large 17" screen, specifically because I have no faith in web developers to give a crap if they can use their website, and larger fonts are readable with less contrast.
I'm a horrible ageist because I think vision related accessibility features are especially important for older people. I am morally below you.
>It sounds like you want FAANG to be the only game in town given they're probably the only people with the budget and bodies to fulfill all of your requirements
Have building codes caused the independent contractor to go extinct?
There are various ways to scale accessibility and make it easy like building it directly into UI toolkits, frameworks, etc. In fact the criticism in this thread isn't aimed at Joe developer making a small website, it's somebody making a tool that many developers will use that will break their sites functionality. I care much more when somebody is making inaccessible tooling that's bad than I do when an unskilled developer doesn't know how to design an accessible UI.
I don't expect every website made by every developer at every skill level no matter how old or niche it is to be accessible, I'm not insane. Yet contrast has to be one of the absolute easiest parts of accessibility (compared to say making a site screen reader compatible) and most of the excuses for not caring about it are exceedingly lame. Even for NON-DISABLED users low contrast is a hallmark of bad design and a site that's difficult to actually use.
It's always funny when people get on their virtue bully pulpit and then immediately go to ageism. Nice work.
> The analogy I would make is actually round doorknobs vs door levers/handles. If you pay attention you will notice you don’t see doorknobs on new public buildings and that’s because of issues like arthritis. Yes somebody might aesthetically prefer doorknobs but that doesn’t justify their installation in something used by the general public. It’s fine for a PRIVATE website to be as inaccessible as you want, but not a public one.
So I as an independent developer am responsible for this in all of my public code? That's asinine. My home is catered to me, if people want to visit me in my home I am not going to change my door knobs, fix my windows, redo my concrete, etc so it can happen. It's mine and out of the charity of my heart I am letting other people use it if they need it.
Where do you draw the line? It sounds like you want FAANG to be the only game in town given they're probably the only people with the budget and bodies to fulfill all of your requirements. I don't see someone repackaging firefox as "firefox with accessibility", or using an add-on, as an undo burden on taking advantage of a service voluntarily provided, and most importantly does not compel you to use it.