
Firefox Developer Tools: Accessibility inspector - teamhappy
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Accessibility_inspector
======
ndarilek
I hope this means the developer tools _themselves_ will actually become
accessible. As a blind web developer running Linux and Orca, bunches of things
have been broken for a very long time, to the point where I'm considering
switching to ChromeOS and running Linux in chroots/containers just to get a
better set of web development tools. I'm glad that they're empowering
developers to create accessible websites, but if blind/disabled developers
were empowered to _develop_ on equal footing, then that'd be another way to
achieve the same goal.

As one example, I can't navigate the network inspector via keyboard in any
meaningful way. Firebug used to have this nailed, to the point where you could
even enable an accessibility mode (though arguably accessibility mode should
have just been the _only_ mode.) And yes, I'd happily file issues for this and
half a dozen other things, but at some point I actually have to do my job, and
in this case that might mean jumping ship to a browser that seems more
accessible.

~~~
ssdd
Unfortunately, we live in a highly competitive/growth demanding times where
companies chose to invest resources only on areas where they see good returns.
This means that for-profit companies, like google, in long run would do far
less than non-profit companies, like firefox,for special need audience.

~~~
oDot
Why is that unfortunate? If a company lack financial incentive to build
something, means not many people want it, or the little that do don't want it
enough

~~~
chiefalchemist
Or the ones that do want it enough don't have the means and the tools to de-
marginalize themselves.

In this caae, I hope you're seeing the (sad and obvious) irony.

~~~
oDot
Even if all disabled people would have been poor, if there was enough of them,
then relevant solutions would have emerged (similar to how cheap food came to
be).

Disablities are unfortunate and sometimes sad. However, the way the market
works is not. There are limited resources, and they are being distributed
where the demand is highest.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Apple spent plenty of years doing what they felt was right, and not chase the
highest demand.

On that example alone, I feel you're being short sighted.

Put another way, you're under the impression this is about people with special
needs. Not at all. This is about people with special needs AND the people who
believe they deserve the same "fair chance" the rest of us get. Not all of use
are self-absorbed.

p.s. re: "similar to how cheap food came to be"

Seeing how this got us obesity and all the diseases that go with it, I'm not
so sure you're model / mindset is the one that's ideal. Perhaps it's time to
think more holistically?

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KeitIG
As a front-end developer, accessibility has always been a way for me to
describe to non-technical people what I actually do for a living.

Saying: "I build web applications" means nothing to them, and saying "I create
website" makes you look like a wizard doing some black magic.

But saying "my job is to make websites accessible to everyone: we are used to
use a screen and a mouse, but what if you are blind or deaf? Those people
should not be allowed to go on any website? My role is to make those people
able to browse the web, as you and me" give them an example of what kind of
problems you actually solve as a web developer.

~~~
madeofpalk
> _Saying: "I build web applications" means nothing to them, and saying "I
> create website" makes you look like a wizard doing some black magic._

Who are these people? When people ask what I do I just tell them "I'm a
developer; I make websites" and they understand what I do enough to move the
conversation forward. Is there other context I'm missing?

~~~
edent
In France, roughly 12% of people don't use the Internet -
[https://www.arcep.fr/uploads/tx_gspublication/State-Of-
Inter...](https://www.arcep.fr/uploads/tx_gspublication/State-Of-Internet-in-
France-2017_may2017.pdf)

In Indonesia, millions of people say that they don't use the Internet - but
they _do_ use Facebook - [https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-
have-no-id...](https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-
theyre-using-the-internet/)

For all of us, it's worth stepping out of our bubble to see how other people
perceive what we take for granted.

~~~
frockington
Those are really interesting statistics. Would be a good idea to look those up
before traveling on business

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have_faith
For every website a client has asked me to check SEO reports and the like, I
get 0 requests to check accessibility or any mention of it. I do my best to
make what I build accessible with the time I have, but clients (and many
employers) seem blind to it. Has anyone had any success with getting
accessibility taken more seriously in these contexts?

~~~
Theodores
Nope. It is deeply misunderstood across the 'industry'. Blank stares ensue.

There is opportunity in this as SEO (a 'service' that can be sold) really
depends on accessibility. I find people still concerned with 'keyword
frequency' and whether they have their H1 tags in the right place when it
comes to 'SEO'. Nobody is talking about making the web better for everyone
(which includes the customers with no accessibility problems) and that being
the central plank of better sales.

A further problem is that web 'design' agencies do not have the sales staff to
sell accessibility. The pitch should not be that hard given that the baby
boomer generation have all the money and need spectacles to read anything
closer than arms-length away.

I also have yet to see anyone offering accessibility audit services where a
genuine, registered partially sighted person does the auditing and testing.
This could be end to end, i.e. ordering the product and returning it, with all
emails checked along the way, complete with physical packaging.

We assume 'we know best' and that we know what a screen-reader user would want
rather than reach out to anyone who is practically blind and ask them what
they think. Patronising!!!

~~~
robin_reala
Those services definitely exist. I’ve used the DAC[1] in Cardiff before for
indepth review from expert users of assistive tech, but I’ve also taken part
in standard user research with people with accessibility needs (ranging from
blindness to motor problems to severe dyslexia). One thing to bear in mind
when doing user research like that is that bringing people into your lab won’t
work: people who use assistive tech setups tend to customise them to fit their
needs, so you need to get out and observe ‘in the field’ if possible.

[1]
[http://digitalaccessibilitycentre.org/](http://digitalaccessibilitycentre.org/)

~~~
Theodores
The
[http://digitalaccessibilitycentre.org/](http://digitalaccessibilitycentre.org/)
website is awful. Efforts like this give accessibility a bad name.

Accessibility isn't about designing websites that are exclusively for special
needs people. It is about making websites work for everyone, whatever device
they are on. Part of that ethos is sticking to convention.

So what is so awful?

The navigation is awful. It changes from the homepage to one of the other
pages.

Their use of mini-font sizes is also a bit silly.

Even the URL structure is a bit silly, nobody needs to have index.php in a URL
to make it mysteriously more accessible.

Their headings have line heights that mean 2-line headings are mangled
together.

If you run a outline on their pages the content does not reflect what is
shown.

I would be embarrassed if I worked with these so-called accessibility experts,
their efforts sideline what accessibility is about. Cringeworthy and awful!!!

~~~
robin_reala
No comment on their site, but their employees helped me discover and resolve
problems I never would have, for example a breaking problem in Windows 10 high
contrast mode, or a problem with a specific version of Dragon
NaturallySpeaking that was earlier than the one I had been testing on.

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Someone1234
I use the Accessibility Inspector in Chrome's devtools. But in both the cases
of Firefox and Chrome, it should be remembered that the Accessibility
Inspector is only a partial view into accessibility issues, and that better
extensions exist to show you a broader picture.

See this article for suggestions in other better tools and techniques:

[https://www.24a11y.com/2017/accessibility-testing-tools-
desk...](https://www.24a11y.com/2017/accessibility-testing-tools-desktop-
mobile-websites/)

------
kumarharsh
I agree with ndarilek's comment. When the Firebug team started making
firebug.next, there were huge problems with the inbuilt dev-tools. They then
decided to merge the two projects and stopped developing Firebug. I had
expressed my concerns to them after trying the beta for a long time. The team
was very receptive of the comments, but sadly not much was implemented until I
stopped using FF as my main browser. Even to this date, the Firefox Devtools
are nowhere near Chrome's. Yes, there are some very useful features added in
Firefox's Devtools but the performance is very poor. Especially the Scripting
tab. Try setting a breakpoint in a half-decent webapp - the whole browser(!)
hangs for atleast 10 minutes, sometimes forever. There were problems with
displaying raw JSON response in the network tab too for a long time - Firebug
had the funtionality, so was shocking to see FF drop it in favour of a very
clumsy and inaccessible tree view. Then, when FF Quantumcame, I flocked back
to FF thinking the devtools would be fixed too. Nope. I have been a long time
FF user (I think since v1.5, Netscape before that), and would very much like
to use FF as my main browser. But as a web developer, it's impossible to use
it. The sheer number of hours wasted just trying to keep my browser to not
hang trumps my fanboyism. There is nothing better than what Chrome offers in
this area.

~~~
chrismorgan
I use Firefox’s dev tools for my work on FastMail and Topicbox (the other guy
who does the most frontend work uses Chrome). Firefox’s debugger is definitely
painfully slow when paused and stepping, but I can’t reproduce what you say
about full-browser hangs. Setting a breakpoint completes within a few hundred
milliseconds (most of which is just rendering).

The fancy JSON thing: if you collapse the “JSON” expander you’ll see another,
“Response payload”, which shows it as text. (If JSON is expanded, Response
payload may not expand properly; that’s a bug. I haven’t reported it despite
knowing about it for a while.)

Firefox has been my primary browser since 0.93, save for a year or so on
Chrome when I had to run it from a USB stick and Firefox got just _too_ slow
there. Nightly has been my daily driver for most of this decade.

~~~
kumarharsh
The JSON thing they have fixed - I think I didn't make it explicitly clear in
my comment. But it was that tree view for quite some time after the new
devtools revamp.

About the full browser hangs - maybe it was my own system, but I usually had
Slack and Gmail open. And those tabs already ate a lot of RAM, making FF
sluggish. Opening the scripting tab on my own dev site used to make the
browser just get stuck. Devtools didn't use to respond either, but clicking on
the close button sometimes worked, so I had to hope that I could click on the
cross button without triggering the dreaded "This app has stopped responding"
dialog.

------
Leimi
Great to see browsers adding accessibility in their devtools since a few
months!

One thing I don't understand here: why is the Accessibility tab not shown by
default? Accessibility is something lots of developers don't even know about.
I'm sure having the tab visible by default would help greatly in making
developers more aware of it.

~~~
TuringTest
Just guessing here, but if this feature is new, you'd want to show it to
people who know what they're doing and look for it actively.

This way you can get feedback from experts in the field to refine the
interface and features. Once you have a solid viable product, you can show it
to the rest of the world and see how well it serves the needs of people less
in the know, without frightening them with a half-baked tool.

~~~
r3bl
No, it slows the performance of dev tools and increases the memory usage when
turned on. It is addressed in the article, as stated by someone else.

~~~
Leimi
Having the tab shown and having the accessibility tool working and consuming
resource seems to be two different things.

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bungie4
Good timing. I'm currently working on an existing app that is targeted
specifically at those with accessibility issues as part of a larger service
offering. More so towards those with hearing issues.

This is a good first step, I have been using the WAVE accessibility plug in
for Firefox to identify missed issues in my first run through of the app.

Luckily, we have an employee with a visual impairment that we can utilize for
real world testing of the app.

This really is its own specialty.

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brightball
This is great news. Just making it easier for developers to see the impact of
small things without having to go look for tools to do it is huge in this
area.

