
Dos and don'ts on designing for accessibility (2016) - fanf2
https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/02/dos-and-donts-on-designing-for-accessibility/
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readams
Most of these are just good principles for making a site better for everyone,
so it's good how much overlap there is. The screenreader requirements are
probably the only things that imposes some actual constraints

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blahedo
This is the brilliant fact underlying nearly all accessibility work: in
addition to the people with documented permanent disabilities that are the
official beneficiaries of such developments (and regulations where those
exist), there are hosts of people who are temporarily disabled, who are
disabled but undiagnosed, who are not quite over the margin of "disabled" but
who are less able than others, who have temporary needs that aren't
disabilities at all but just benefit from different routes to access, or even
who just plain have different preferences. The ADA in the US is a great
example of this—a lot of the stuff it mandates makes your life better even if
you're just, say, pushing a stroller and don't "need" the ADA-mandated ramp.

So yeah, best practices for disability accommodation are not just about
handling the "<1%" (as someone in a different thread put it) that need them.

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jakobbuis
I'm aware of most techniques for making websites more accessible, and try to
apply them where possible.

Unfortunately, the problem is most often not in applying the techniques, but
convincing non-technical colleagues that these steps are important, even if
they take a little longer.

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readams
You can mention the liability potential from the ADA.

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jakobbuis
I've started to notice that customers are getting uneasy at the prospect of
incoming legislation here in The Netherlands. I believe there's a new law in
the works that makes accessibility mandatory in some cases, mostly pseudo-
government related content though, so its scope remains limited.

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ivanbakel
In my experience with gov.uk websites, they really do dogfood on these
principles. It's a great reference for good design.

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agiamas
GDS is doing an exemplary job on gov.uk websites. There are actual user groups
with accessibility challenges that will evaluate web services in the UX labs
before release.

Service designers, UX people and developers will take this user group into
account at all stages of design, or else GDS won't let them GA the service.

Contrast it with the unicorn/more money than you can spend .com tech companies
that view accessibility as a "necessity we wish would get away with" or small
startups that view it as "why are you wasting your time with <1% of our users"
and you see the challenges and design decisions being drastically different
between different entities... :(

Bear in mind, accessibility concerns a huge array of people one way or
another, from straight out being blind/deaf to dyschromatopsia and related
issues, people unable to use a mouse etc... It's not an easy problem to tackle
and it is a problem that I wish everyone developing for mobile/web would take
into account every day...:/

