

So, You Don’t Have Any Disabled Users? - japhyr
http://www.21times.org/archives/so-you-dont-have-any-disabled-users/

======
npsimons
One thing that always surprises me is how many people take offense to the
suggestion to make their software/websites more accessible, as if it's
trampling on their artistic freedom. Even here on enlightened HN, the top-most
comment seems to worry about some "Orwellian" future where non-accessible
websites are verboten.

I prefer to look at making things accessible in two more positive ways:

1\. It's a challenge; any designer can slap together a slick looking website.
It takes thought and creativity (and research) to make an interface that is
inherently flexible and usable by just about anyone.

2\. Sure, you might scoff at the market possibilities today (seven percent?
who cares!). But as life expectancy goes up, so do the numbers with
disability, and the longer someone is alive, the more money they are likely to
have. Reap those baby boomers! (cynical, yes; but this is business after all).

~~~
debacle
> It takes thought and creativity (and research)

And _money_. Lots and lots of money. Sometimes, especially with single-page
sites, it can take more than 100% of the base budget to implement the
progressive enhancement necessary for screen readers and the like.

Customers don't want to pay for it, and I'm not going to do it for free.

Your point in 2 needs to be backed up by some numbers. You can't appeal to
someone's internal economist without some statistics.

~~~
therealkatie
If your HTML is valid, and you're not doing crazy stuff with your headers,
chances are the screen reader is going to do just fine.

I worked for the government, and every single site we put out had to be 508
compliant (in other words, accessible). It never doubled our budget, ever, and
we had some pretty complex interfaces.

As for point two, go check out how many Baby Boomers are alive today. Then,
remember this:

Baby boomers control over 80% of personal financial assets and more than half
of all consumer spending.

They're also going to start needing sites that deal with their aging eyes,
poor vision, and joint issues.

~~~
debacle
If most of your site is rendered with JavaScript and most of your content is
delivered via JSON, you're kind of screwed.

------
mgkimsal
"One of the newer groups under the accessibility umbrella, this group has
become more vocal in the past few years. Those with dyslexia and ADD or ADHD
have begun to press for a less busy Internet, one where ads don’t distract
them to the point of being unable to use a site, or where proper contrast is
used, rather than the more artistic combinations of light text against an only
slightly lighter background."

IMO, browser makers failed us 15+ years ago by not making the ability to
style/theme our sites more prominent as part of the UI. (and cookie
management, but that's a different rant) The idea of using your own custom
style sheets was always, at best, an extreme fringe feature. Yes, markup has
to be 'right' for this to work, and browser makers catered to poor markup way
too much in the early days. I'm not sure we can easily get out of it, but
perhaps now... with a somewhat renewed focus on semantic markup and better CSS
in browsers, we could encourage browsers to treat "user-specified" styling as
a first class function of what it means to be a 'browser'?

Using Safari 5 right now, there's _no option_ I can find to set a minimum font
size. A 'default' font and size, yes, but that seems to be ignored or
overwritten by every site I go to. It's 2012 and I still have to 'increase
font size' on a number of sites I go to (and I know about keystrokes to do so
- other people I know tend to just suffer with small fonts).

~~~
antidoh
Firefox makes the binary choice straightforward: accept the site's styling, or
use no styling: "View/Page Style/No Style". I find myself going to no style
much more frequently these days, as cool UIs become fashionable but are still
hard to get right, especially cross browser.

So what does someone do in between? Immerse themselves in hidden browser
settings? Use greasemonkey?

~~~
Cass
Firefox has the option to let you set the font and a minimum font size, and
will force all sites to stick to it. (Tools -> Options -> Content -> Advanced)

I view the entire internet in Times New Roman 20 pt. I have to turn it off for
more complicated sites like amazon, where having giant font in their tiny
boxes breaks functionality, but it works beautifully on simple sites like
hacker news, where I spend most of my time. (And by "beautifully" I mean, it's
butt-ugly, but I can sit back from the computer at a comfortably ergonomic
distance and read without straining my eyes.)

------
jeffool
Having worked as a relay operator for the deaf and hard of hearing, I can not
tell you how bad forms are in virtually all software.

When calling a deaf person, you may need to call a relay or translation
service, meaning two phone numbers. Virtually no company, even those with a
"notes" area have an established protocol for this. And many just don't have
even that.

And no notes is a huge pain. You know how it's a pain in the ass to get the
cable/Internet guy to come at a convenient time? They often insist on calling
first to ensure their trip isn't wasted. Now imagine you're deaf, and the guy
calls every time, and he doesn't use a relay/translator, and never actually
communicating... He never comes.

God it has to be annoying sometimes. It was for me and I was getting paid for
those calls.

~~~
jws
Perhaps some lost startup will pivot to providing single number relay service
using twilio or similar. Each phone number would be unique to a relay/deaf
customer pair.

~~~
sadga
Seems the solution hear is Google Voice or some client software that receives
the phone call on behalf of the user, and sets up the relay. Relay should be a
"hook-in" feature of my phone, not a concern of the caller.

------
Tipzntrix
"Those with dyslexia and ADD or ADHD have begun to press for a less busy
Internet, one where ads don’t distract them to the point of being unable to
use a site, or where proper contrast is used, rather than the more artistic
combinations of light text against an only slightly lighter background."

Aah, your gray font used to write this is hard to read and I haven't been
characterized for any of these.

Also, HN seems to make it hard for people with these impairments to read
downvoted comments :P, though they do that to everyone. There should be an
option to re-darken a downvoted comment temporarily.

~~~
sp332
I just select it with my mouse, but I'm not sure how effective that is on a
touch device.

~~~
stephengillie
It's not. Dead posts are moreso on mobile.

HN as a whole on mobile is a somewhat miserable experience.

~~~
RandallBrown
I like to use ihackernews.com

~~~
graue
Whoa, this is great! Thanks for the pointer. I might even start using this on
my desktop, too, it's so nice.

~~~
jevinskie
I used iHackerNews until <http://cheeaun.github.com/hnmobile/> came out.

------
epochwolf
So.. I'm working on a website that is primarily for reading. Just looking at
the statistics, there is 7.9 million people out of 300 million in the US that
will have either be blind or effectively blind. That's 2.6% of the population
that won't be able to access my site. That's below my threshold for dropping
browser support.

I'm pretty sure my time would be better spend making it visually better than
learning about accessibility.

~~~
therealkatie
Even if your site is just for reading, have you considered all the above
groups?

* Can someone who can't use a mouse navigate your site? How about if they can't use a keyboard? * Can your default styles be over-ridden? Does it grow gracefully, or is content suddenly hidden? * Have you checked your color contrasts for the color blind? * Are ads constantly looping animations? * What fonts are you using? * Does it have a consistant navigation? * What about the content? Is there any attempt to make it as readable as possible? Or are the authors long-winded? * Is text broken up into reasonably sized paragraphs? Are sections effectively used? * Is there abuse of all-caps or italics?

Those are just off the top of my head. If you think that the blind and
visually impaired are all you have to worry about, you'd be wrong.

~~~
epochwolf
_Can someone who can't use a mouse navigate your site? How about if they can't
use a keyboard?_

I test on my ipad and iphone for usability. I plan on having mobi export so
you can use a kindle if you want.

 _Can your default styles be over-ridden? Does it grow gracefully, or is
content suddenly hidden?_

The base font is 14pt with additional spacing between lines. The navigation
won't degrade well but the body content should be fine though it might wrap
oddly.

 _Have you checked your color contrasts for the color blind?_

I do actually. I regularly use OSX's accessiblity tools to use grayscale or
high contrast mode. I also have a badly-balanced lcd screen for testing if the
text is still readable without proper color balance. The site is primarily
black on light gray so I don't have many problems with that.

 _Are ads constantly looping animations?_

No ads, currently. I doubt I will ever add them but if I do they will be
static and only on index pages.

 _What fonts are you using?_

    
    
        $sansFontFamily:        "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
        $serifFontFamily:       Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
        $monoFontFamily:        Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, "Courier New", monospace;
    

_Does it have a consistant navigation?_

Edit links tend to be in the same place everywhere on the site. Still working
on that. Delete buttons are always bright red on the bottom left of the edit
screen. I hid them a bit on purpose since I would prefer people to archive
stuff instead of deleting it.

 _What about the content? Is there any attempt to make it as readable as
possible? Or are the authors long-winded? Is text broken up into reasonably
sized paragraphs? Are sections effectively used? Is there abuse of all-caps or
italics?_

I have very little control over writing quality. It's a place for people to
share their writing. I do a lot to mitigate the damage normal people like to
inflict on readability but I can't force them to use paragraphs, capital
lettters, or typography properly. I can only insure that all the text is in
the same font and size for everyone's submissions. (I don't allow authors to
increase or decrease font size. All html is prestyled with minimal room for
adjustment.)

------
Zenst
The biggest disability on the internet is communications. As such a interface
that transcends the needs to have any written language is one that is doing
more than most.

That is why the up vote and down vote buttons are what is known as intuitive
is use.

But if you design something with KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) then you can at
least have a good interface to tap into.

I would love a site that allowed you to go into edit mode and drag and drop
and move and select the elements of the site you wanted and had that as a
default style sheet for that site. You can then have voted user style
sheets/templates for the site that enable somebody who is say colour-blind to
select the one best for them. Though for colour blindness I'm surprised none
of these smart TV's have the ability for the user to custom remap aspects of
the colour palate to accommodating them. Though I'm not colour blind, but it
is a common enough issue and a fine solvable example with regards towards a
accommodative user interface.

------
elliottcarlson
I could be wrong - my apologies if I am - in the section about the hearing
impaired, shouldn't it be "Deaf community" with a capital D?

~~~
rmrfrmrf
You're right. Also, "hearing impaired" is offensive. Correct terms are 'deaf'
and 'hard-of-hearing'.

~~~
Dylan16807
How the heck is "impaired" offensive but "hard of" not offensive.

Let's see what the national association of the deaf says. "The term focuses on
what people can’t do. It establishes the standard as “hearing” and anything
different as “impaired,” or substandard, hindered, or damaged."

By what interpretation of words does "hard of" not do the exact same thing.
Did I miss an important evolution of English again?

Edit: Looked some more. NCDS is fine with "hearing impaired" but says that
some people object. Then I found this page
<http://www.deaflinx.com/DeafCommunity/identity.html> Its objection to
"hearing impaired" is the mere fact that it ignores people's culture/identity
choices wrt the Deaf community. This reasoning reminds me of the insular sub-
community of the deaf that tries to push 'Deaf Culture' so strongly that they
can be against fixing people's ability to hear; people that will make 'Deaf'
their very _identity_. To be honest I don't care what those people find
offensive.

But if you have a better reasoning than those people I am ready and willing to
learn and accept it.

------
marknutter
Just like we have laws against discrimination based on disability and measures
like handicap parking spots, does anyone envision a future where there's some
sort of federal mandate that websites cater to the disabled?

~~~
Adrock
When you say "we", I assume you mean the United States. There's already
progress in that direction in other countries:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility#Legally_requi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility#Legally_required_web_accessibility)

It's already a de facto requirement for anyone selling software to the
government. When I was a PM at Microsoft working on Visio, I was surprised and
amazed at how much time and energy went into accessibility of all the Office
product. It's not easy to make a visual design program like Visio work well
for the blind or visually impaired!

~~~
antidoh
Please say more about that.

I'm trying to think how a blind user could effectively use a visual design
program or its output. Do you output text representation of diagrams? Does a
blind user put the product to some use and purpose that's different from the
average sighted user?

~~~
epascarello
If the visual representation can be described with data, you give them the
option to view that data. Images have a longdesc attribute for this
<http://webaim.org/techniques/images/longdesc>

Not all visual applications can be made accessible.

------
ZoFreX
What about disabled employees? Do employee handbooks and HR materials have to
be accessible to the visually impaired, for example?

~~~
therealkatie
In general, yes. There's a few exceptions, but in general you should have an
accessible version for the visually impaired (or, really, any of the groups I
list in the article. Are your training videos captioned for the Deaf? Can
someone with motion issues navigate your HR site using Tab or adaptive
devices? Is the language overly contrived or the font and color choices bad?)

~~~
sadga
Just "deaf" here. "deaf" people who aren't part of "Deaf cultre" are just as
unable to hear as "Deaf people". In fact, the average "Deaf" person may be
more likely to be able to hear, since "Deaf" is cultural (can be opted-into)
and "deaf" is biological.

