
Chromebook accessibility: Changing the order of mouse buttons is unsupported - edent
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/01/chromebooks-arent-accessible-and-google-doesnt-care/
======
jareds
So just because this specific person has an issue that doesn't allow them to
use a Chromebook they should make a blanket statement that they are
inaccessible? I'm totally blind and have had a Chromebook for several years. I
got it as a gift because I was interested in its accessibility. I've seen
Google make large strides in accessibility in the couple years I've owned it.
It went from barely usable to something I am comfortable using as my only
computer if I don't need to do any programming. Just because something may not
be fully accessible to someone does not mean we should ignore all the work
companies have done to move accessibility from nonexistent to decent.

~~~
edent
I'm extremely glad that Chromebooks are accessible to you. But they are not
accessible to me.

In a similar way to saying a subtitled movie isn't acessible. Sure, it meets
the needs of the Deaf community - but not people with low/no vision.

Google have done some great things in accessibility - and I regularly work
with them. But this specific issue has remained unresolved for too long now.

~~~
jareds
Have you contacted Google accessibility directly about this instead of writing
an angry blog post and hoping it gets enough traction that someone who works
at google notices?
[https://support.google.com/accessibility/answer/7641084?visi...](https://support.google.com/accessibility/answer/7641084?visit_id=636821183286557811-2874298814&rd=1#disability-
support)

~~~
opencl
Clearly several people working at Google have already noticed because they
replied to the report on the issue tracker about it, and they all said that
implementing this would be a good idea.

~~~
magicalist
> _Clearly several people working at Google have already noticed because they
> replied to the report on the issue tracker about it_

Those were from before this blog post (most recent was December). Sounds like
the problem is prioritization, not convincing them it's a good idea.

------
jdietrich
The absence of a desired feature is not a bug. The author's situation is
clearly very frustrating, but Chrome OS is intentionally minimalistic. _Just
one feature_ isn't going to result in bloat, but there are thousands of users
who want _just one feature_. If he had bought an iPad Pro instead of a
Chromebook, he would have been disappointed to learn that iOS doesn't support
mice at all. A version of Chrome OS that supports every possible use-case and
customisation is just linux. We already have linux.

The issue tracker discussion seems reasonable to me. The UI team don't want to
add and support the code necessary to facilitate the multitude of requests for
remapping and shortcuts, so would prefer a suitable API for extensions. The
kernel team have serious security concerns about such an API, because it would
effectively permit keyloggers on the Chrome OS platform.

On a practical level, I'd advise OP to install Crouton.

~~~
DanBC
> The absence of a desired feature is not a bug.

It is a bug if it excludes disabled people.

~~~
bscphil
While it would be nice if every change that could help a disabled person could
be considered a problem with the product until implemented, that's simply not
possible. It's not possible for small teams, who don't have time to implement
every feature, and it's not possible for large teams, who have to deal with
problems like feature bloat in what is a very simple product from a UI point
of view.

Fortunately not everyone is forced to use Chrome.

~~~
tarboreus
Many people are forced to use it, especially in educational settings. In fact,
this kind of accomodation is the law, at least in the United States. A long
series of ADA lawsuits have forced platforms like Scribd and Kindle to make
their platforms accessible. Unfortunately bringing these lawsuits is expensive
and difficult and the battles have to be picked. Google doesn't have a great
culture of accessibility, and yet more of their products are becoming required
for educational and job settings.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
The developer comments are so... modern? I don't know. Normally I'd call it
"Open Source Dev" mentality, but sadly it has infected non-OSS devs too who
don't even have the excuse of working for free.

Remapping buttons should be trivial. Changing the colors of the UI should be
trivial. Accessibility should be trivial! It is 2019 FFS. Why have we allowed
software to regress so much as an industry? What is wrong with us?

~~~
mrfredward
>Normally I'd call it "Open Source Dev" mentality,

Look, I get that there are some jackasses out there, but I think it's really
wrong to use the words "open source dev" as an insult. People are out there
giving their time and talents to the world for free, and we're all better off
for it. An imperfect volunteer still deserves a thank you, not public
ridicule.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
The thing is, the encounters with Open Source people you remember and that
color your conception of the community are the ones where the dev ignores
issues for years, blames the user, and WONTFIXes legitimate problems. It's
made all the worse by evangelists who try to tell everyone how great open
source is and how everyone should only use open source software, only to turn
around and tell people to fix or implement something themselves when
legitimate issues are raised.

The community has an image problem and that is definitely a problem for the
entire community. You can try and say "well, most of them aren't like that",
but it just doesn't matter because enough of them are and it is an accepted
part of the culture.

Frankly, I don't care if you worked for free. That's a fair reason for not
giving enough of a crap to fix something, but at the same time you'd better
not be holding that mentality while trying to recruit me as a user. If I can't
use your software then I don't see a reason to thank you for making it.

~~~
zeroname
Obviously, no FOSS developer can deal with all user's issues, especially when
they don't pay. They _have to_ drastically limit scope. That means saying "no"
to some users and their issues. FOSS developers nevertheless should be able to
evangelize their software to users in general. Nobody expects a "thank you"
when you don't actually use the software.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
In a reasonable world what would happen is the developer would say "hey, try
my software", and the user would say "sorry, I don't like it/can't use it
because of X", and the developer would either say "you're right, I should fix
that" or "ok, fair enough". In my experience, this is not what happens. What
happens is they tell you that your use case is invalid, your workflow is
wrong, you're too stupid to get it, or a bunch of other lame excuses and then
_still think you should use their software_ or even fix it for them.

~~~
zeroname
If you criticize somebody's work, they'll get defensive. That's a totally
normal human reaction. Users rarely say things like "sorry I don't like it",
it's more likely they file their pet peeve as a major grievance that
supposedly affects untold numbers of other users, like the guy who wrote this
blog post.

Frankly, a lot of users really _do_ have bad workflows, questionable use-cases
and they are relatively uninformed and often unwilling to learn _why_ things
work the way they do. If they don't pay, what else should they do besides
fixing it themselves?

Generally though, "patches welcome" or "fix it yourself" is just a more polite
way of saying "this is getting annoying, please leave now". I don't think
those developers actually care that you (don't) use their software. You can
tell when somebody actively wants to keep you as a user by them _not_ acting
in that way. Like saying "we'll consider it" and then proceeding to do
nothing, for example.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Likely any grievance one user has _is_ shared by many other users who are
silent about it, because those others didn't even care enough about your
software to bother posting an issue. Worse, you often see this same grievance
aired time and time again over years and it is still dismissed out of hand.

>Frankly, a lot of users really do have bad workflows, questionable use-cases
and they are relatively uninformed and often unwilling to learn why things
work the way they do.

Yes, everyone thinks this about everyone else's workflow. Part of being a good
developer, I think, is that just because you can't understand why someone
wants to do a certain thing doesn't mean that their use case is invalid.
That's childish and, frankly, entirely expected of Open Source Dev culture,
which has a nasty habit of being condescending to users.

~~~
zeroname
> Part of being a good developer, I think, is that just because you can't
> understand why someone wants to do a certain thing doesn't mean that their
> use case is invalid.

For all intents and purposes, if you fail to make a convincing argument for a
use-case to a developer, it _is_ invalid. It's not actionable. An argument
could be made for any program to do anything in any possible way, for any
number of reasons. Developers need to narrow that possibility space down
radically. It _would be nice_ if developers could spend the time really
understanding every opinion offered to them, but it's not going to happen.

> That's childish and, frankly, entirely expected of Open Source Dev culture,
> which has a nasty habit of being condescending to users.

Doing "customer support" for free to the general public can wear on you. In
fairness, can we agree that there are "difficult users" as well?

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> For all intents and purposes, if you fail to make a convincing argument for
> a use-case to a developer, it is invalid.

There's a difference between failing to make a convincing argument and the
developer willfully refusing to understand the usecase because they do things
differently and are arrogant enough to believe that their way must be "the one
true right way". That's the problem that plagues open source devs.

> Doing "customer support" for free to the general public can wear on you. In
> fairness, can we agree that there are "difficult users" as well?

Of course there are difficult users, that's not what I'm talking about. The
use-case asked for by the OP is not even remotely unreasonable, yet nothing
was done for 5 years even though it should be trivial. It's just remapping
buttons FFS. Instead they were dismissed as an "edge case" and the
functionality as something only "power users" would want, and therefore they
didn't have to lift a finger. I wish I could say I was surprised, but that's
what I've come to expect from modern developers. Users are cattle, best not to
anthropomorphize them.

------
preommr
> That's when I discovered that accessibility is very much a second thought
> for all the young and healthy people Google employ.

> No. The message being put out is that Google doesn't want unhealthy people
> using its products.

This upsets me because I know a lot of devs do care about accessibility. Hell,
it's not even about developers, any decent human would want to help out
someone when they can. To just say that google employees don't care because
they're "young and healthy" is unwarranted and frankly quite rude.

~~~
edent
But it is a constant pattern with Google. See
[https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/12/do-all-google-employees-
hav...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2014/12/do-all-google-employees-have-perfect-
eyesight/) and [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/11/googles-yellow-is-too-
mello...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/11/googles-yellow-is-too-mellow/) for
two examples. I'm sure you can find more.

And, yes, I am being rude. I am in pain and it sucks. I've tried being polite
for five years and the bug hasn't got any significant attention. Now it has.

~~~
Klathmon
Come on, your second example is silly at best. You are seriously saying that
the middle O in their Google logo has bad contrast, and therefore they don't
care about accessibility?

And your first example doesn't even mention that there is a specially designed
high-contrast mode for android which fixes the readability issues for those
who need it, and Chrome has a text scaling option which can increase the font
size and will actually wrap in the way you want, and android itself has a
"large text mode" which will achieve much of the same.

Google isn't perfect, but those examples aren't exactly doing you any favors
trying to show the issues.

------
BacioiuC
Isn't this a problem for the device manufacturer to write a driver that
supports ChromeOS? Or a hardware toggle for the buttons to switch them?

That's like me writing an operating system right now, from zero and OP
downloads it and feels left-out that I do not have support for re-assigning
mouse buttons. What if I wrote an OS specifically for power users with no
disability because I'm targeting that exact group? Or an OS that only works
with gamepads (I am exaggerating here). Should I feel bad because people who
can't use gamepads want to use it even tough it is not made for them
specifically?

To me, a person with no disabilities and that does not know what you're going
through, it feels like this: I'm way to tall to fit in a Disney World ride and
instead of going for another ride I could fit in I complain that they
discriminate against me and demand they make changes specifically for my
tallness.

Or due to my physical condition (way to tall and a bit overweight) I can't
make it as an astronaut for Nasa's next mission since I don't fit in the
capsule and I demand they compensate for my extra kg's and need of space
inside the capsule instead of choosing someone that fits their current
capsule.

I'm not being ignorant of your problem I'm just trying to understand how the
dev team behind ChromeOS is responsible for all the edge-cases out there. I'd
see it as a problem if they were designing an OS specifically for people with
disabilities.

~~~
penagwin
While it could be a driver/hardware solution, I know that windows supports it,
(I'm sure linux too), so it could be an OS solution, and my guess is that it
wouldn't be too much work (tm) to add it.

However, as other have said, adding just one feature isn't too bad, but 1000
people wanting just one feature becomes unmanageable, and ChromeOS is
intentionally slim.

There are mice with built in profiles such as the Razer and Logitech series
that can switch the mice buttons (and have a button to toggle the profile).
They aren't crazy expensive either, the logitech one is ~30$ IIRC.

------
Havoc
>Google doesn't want unhealthy people using its products.

Seriously?

It's just a product that is intentionally stripped down & doesn't cover all
edge cases.

~~~
edent
Nice to be called an "edge case". Really makes me feel valued as an
individual.

There are thousands of unhealthy people who are being deliberately excluded
from Google's cheap computing revolution. How many of us do there need to be
before we're _not_ an edge case?

~~~
johnnyfaehell
> There are thousands of unhealthy people who are being deliberately excluded
> from Google's cheap computing revolution.

Remove the word deliberately and you've got the truth. It's not like they sat
around the boardroom and said: "You know what, let's make our computers only
usable by healthy folk". It just happened, Google has a ton of people who
didn't think about this aspect. It wasn't something they planned or even
thought about.

~~~
hopler
They did though. They admitted on the bug that ChromeOS is not for power
users, meaning anyone who needs a different configuration from the default.
They didn't accidentally forget,they made a conscious choice, repeatedly.

~~~
johnnyfaehell
> They admitted on the bug that ChromeOS is not for power users

Yes, they admitted it wasn't for power users. Needing to click with your thumb
instead of your finger isn't a power user feature, it's an accessibility
feature. That's why everyone is complaining about it.

They made a conscious choice not to add power user features. They did not make
a conscious choice not to add accessibility feature, it was just a knock on
effect. Hence it not being deliberate.

~~~
namdnay
>Needing to click with your thumb instead of your finger isn't a power user
feature, it's an accessibility feature

I agree. The "power user" requirement here would be: needing to override/remap
this behaviour in the OS, as opposed to having a specialist device with
different buttons

------
tyingq
Two ideas:

a) Get a mouse with internal memory, like the Logitech G700. Program on
Windows, then use with the Chromebook. Not sure if there's a "vertical mouse"
equivalent.

b) Crouton (or other Linux on CB solution) + xinput

You shouldn't have to do either, but perhaps it's better than nothing.

------
avar
The sentiment expressed in many comments here are why it's only a matter of
time before regulators are going to come down hard on the software industry
with some ADA-esque law, and they'll probably be right to do so.

Making a physical device accessible to everyone gets into zero-sum design
decisions, whereas Google's going to have a hard time arguing that a feature
X11 has had for decades is something beyond its resources to implement.

~~~
SilasX
>Google's going to have a hard time arguing that a feature X11 has had for
decades is something beyond its resources to implement.

I don't know, Mozilla had an easy time justifying how they broke the key
remapping API with no replacement [1], even though Super Metroid (1992), on
the SNES, allowed you to do that. SMH.

[1] Extensions can remap keys ... after a tab's page has loaded. Which means
that if you have move-tab-left/right remapped, you can't sail through the tabs
because they'll randomly stop to wait for the page to reload.

------
ben11kehoe
It's even worse when comparing Google's attitude with, for example, Microsoft
releasing a dedicated, extensible accessible controller for Xbox
[https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessibility](https://www.xbox.com/en-
US/xbox-one/accessibility)

------
snazz
If you put your Chromebook in Developer Mode, you should be able to access a
root Linux shell and remap buttons there. However, I don’t think Chrome OS
uses Xorg at all so your xinput solution won’t work to remap mouse buttons.
The only solution that’s effectively guaranteed to work is to install Crouton
and run a Linux distro of your choice on it. You would still have to deal with
the annoying boot sequence and slightly less security.

------
owaislone
So disappointed with all the comments defending Chrome OS because it aims for
a minimalist design and doesn't add feature bloat. You can't really count
accessibility and other features as the same thing.

------
TheLoneAdmin
Just open up your mouse and rewire the buttons.

