[HN Gopher] Web Accessibility Guidelines: Would They Provide Ben...
___________________________________________________________________
Web Accessibility Guidelines: Would They Provide Benefits to
Nondisabled Users?
Author : tommasoamici
Score : 33 points
Date : 2022-01-24 18:55 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.sagepub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.sagepub.com)
| Animats wrote:
| But did it improve the click-through rate?
| syrrim wrote:
| Unless I'm misunderstanding, this seems to be a totally
| correlational result. That is, they found that websites with
| increased accessibility tend to also be more usable. This is
| easily explained by assuming that developers who care about
| usability also tend to care about accessibility. It is more
| difficult to explain in a directly causative way, since many
| accessibility features, such as aria attributes, are completely
| invisible to non-disabled users.
| kevingadd wrote:
| There are definitely some core accessibility features that are
| great for non-disabled users, though, for example having text
| descriptions for images (it always irritated me that alt-text
| didn't automatically generate a tooltip, though I sort of
| understand why)
|
| It's great to be able to mouse over images in Tweetdeck and (if
| the poster provided it) have the alt-text pop up in a tooltip
| so I can scan it to see if it's worth the time to open the
| image, and it's great to have textual descriptions of toolbar
| icons.
| beojan wrote:
| Huh, you're right, it doesn't anymore. It used to though.
|
| I suppose it makes sense now that the web has gone from
| primarily being a document platform that's sometimes used to
| create simple applications to primarily being an application
| platform.
| sefrost wrote:
| It's the title attribute on an image element that generates
| the tooltip. Did alt do that previously or was it always
| title?
|
| MDN says not to put the same text in title and alt, as some
| screenreaders will read both.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/Im...
| kevingadd wrote:
| IIRC _very_ early on browsers would turn alt into
| tooltips, and then that functionality was split out into
| title. I understand why but I 'm still bitter about it
| since they don't want you to use both.
| tommasoamici wrote:
| I agree, however they did also run an experiment manipulating
| the same site (keeping design and layout equal and changing
| contrast levels). You can see two screenshots on page 616
| ivanhoe wrote:
| There's also a 3rd category of users, the bots, and
| crawlers/scrapers can greatly benefit from some of those
| invisible accessibility features...
| fredleblanc wrote:
| Absolutely, because not all disabilities are permanent. They can
| broken into lifelong disabilities, acquired, temporary,
| situational, and chronic (potentially among others). Just think
| of how many people who can hear still use captioning on their
| TVs. Or how easy your website is to reading on a phone during a
| bright, sunny day. Or how usable your stuff is for someone
| holding a child in one arm. Accessibility (and thus, WCAG's
| success criteria) helps everyone.
|
| I don't think it's unusual that creators who have thought about
| accessibility have also thought a lot about UX, etc. So there may
| be some correlation there. But as others have posted, while there
| are some criteria more targeted at those using assistive
| technology (like screen readers), there are just as many things
| helping everyone else.
|
| Besides all that, none of us are getting younger, and with age
| comes reduced mobility, dexterity, sight, hearing, etc. You never
| know what tomorrow brings. Someone who self-identifies as having
| no disabilities today may have a different experience tomorrow.
|
| But then again, web accessibility is what I do for a living, so
| of course I'm a bit biased. :)
| jakub_g wrote:
| Famous pic about situational disabilities:
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/xamarin/wp-content/uploads/si...
|
| (Google keyword: "microsoft inclusive design situational
| accessibility"; ironically, the canonical image comes from a
| guideline at https://www.microsoft.com/design/inclusive/ which
| is a PDF -- nowhere as accessible as web)
|
| > people who can hear still use captioning on their TVs
|
| Something that is rarely mentioned: foreigners who are learning
| the language. Captions are a turbo booster of learning, without
| them it can take years to understand what's up in TV when
| you're learning from zero.
| fredleblanc wrote:
| Absolutely! Low literacy and illiteracy effects about 2
| billion people in the world, and can include everyone using
| your primary language as their secondary language. Even if
| they're getting by with running your site through Google
| Translate or whatever, the less you write in complex
| concepts, jargon, or regional idioms, the more likely they'll
| be able to accurately comprehend your message.
|
| And Microsoft's toolkit is wonderful. My favorite part of
| working in accessibility for [big company] is that we don't
| have business rivals in the a11y space. Everyone is in it to
| get better together.
|
| Good accessibility is too often a competitive advantage in
| web products, when it should be the standard.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Facebook's representative at an accessibility conference
| mentioned that 30% of their mobile users do not use the default
| text size. This is a huge number, considering how hard it is to
| get people to change defaults. Features that are ostensibly for
| accessibility may be useful much more broadly.
|
| I've seen this in the usability feature that my startup created.
| I initially launched on HN and got great traction in the lifehack
| community. Then I started hearing from people with disabilities
| who find our tech to be indispensable as an assistive technology.
| Our partners have reported 40% more reading on general-purpose
| platforms and 70% more reading on platforms for people with ADHD
| or dyslexia. (You can see what the reading tech looks like here,
| under Enhance Readability: [1])
|
| Not all accessibility features benefit people who do not identify
| as disabled. But the ones that do are a win-win (and they help
| make the case for accessibility more generally).
|
| 1: https://unreasonable.is/how-to-stop-working-and-be-more-
| prod...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Certainly many things recommended for disabled users are of great
| benefit to non-disabled users, but there are also things that are
| recommended against for disabled users that the lack of can
| slightly hinder the usability of sites or applications.
|
| One particular thing is that it is generally recommended against
| auto focusing in fields, but for sighted non-keyboard navigating
| users there are many applications in which setting the focus
| automatically in a field just makes a lot of sense.
|
| But, as should be noted by my word choice, there is also an
| asymmetry to the damage accessibility considerations or lack
| thereof can cause - in disabled users they can make the site
| unusable, in non-disabled users they can make the site slightly
| annoying.
| Eduard wrote:
| > One particular thing is that it is generally recommended
| against auto focusing in fields [...]
|
| What do you mean by "generally recommended"? The publication
| reviews WCAG 2.0. I don't know any WCAG recommendation that
| fits your described annoyance. In fact, WCAG 2.1 does recommend
| to e.g. put focus on the first form element with failing form
| validation, see
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/forms/notifications/#after-...
|
| More information:
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/on-focus.html
| akersten wrote:
| It would seem browsers would benefit from an easily-toggleable
| "disable auto-focus" option. That seems like a win/win to me
| DangitBobby wrote:
| My understanding was that skipping accessibility features was
| more about cost than anything else.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| Cost, knowledge deficit of the designer &/or eng side,
| inertia.. there are a lot of reasons. Many html a11y features
| are as easy to implement as adding an attribute (but people are
| unaware) -- other things, like designing a product flow to be
| accessible, can't be fixed with engineering; they have to be
| redesigned.
|
| My team at LinkedIn is trying to solve the eng side of this
| with a combination of automated tooling like linting & headless
| testing, reporting, etc., trying to make it as painless as
| possible for an engineer to fall into a pit of success re: a11y
| for web/mobile experiences.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I just published a post in the same vein: The Best Accessibility
| Features You've Never Heard Of. [1] I describe several examples
| of super helpful features that most people don't even know exist.
|
| 1: https://beelinereader.medium.com/the-best-accessibility-
| feat...
| [deleted]
| peppustimbus wrote:
| Get them to install Vimium extension and a Tilling Windows
| Manager.
| JadeNB wrote:
| This doesn't seem to address the point of the article, which is
| the (in)validity of the argument "I don't need to/shouldn't
| implement guidelines that help users with disabilities, because
| they are ineffective for/hurt users without disabilities."
| Proposing something else that disabled people can do (I guess
| that's who 'them' is?) is probably not helpful here, although
| it could be helpful in a thread looking for tips for disabled
| users.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Proposing something else that disabled people can do (I
| guess that's who 'them' is?)
|
| I would guess that 'them' refers to nondisabled users, who
| are the only group mentioned in the headline.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I would guess that 'them' refers to nondisabled users,
| who are the only group mentioned in the headline.
|
| That's certainly a logical reading, but I have even more
| trouble interpreting the post that way (but this ambiguity
| of interpretation is one more reason why drive-by comments
| --not yours, but the earlier one to which I was responding
| --are less than helpful). The question isn't whether
| there's any way to make browsing easier for non-disabled
| users; it's whether making browsing easier for disabled
| users makes it harder for non-disabled users (and the
| answer is no). In that context, it's not clear why one
| would want to provide advice about the browsing habits of
| non-disabled users.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| As I read it, the question is "do accessibility efforts
| do anything to help non-disabled users?", and the implied
| message of the response was "if the non-disabled users
| switch to vimium and a tiling window manager, then yes
| [but otherwise probably not]".
| ogou wrote:
| Accessibility is about much more than aria tags. When done well
| it is a holistic approach that benefits any user. It really
| shines when included in the design process because it can depend
| on how information is organized. Having a rational flow to the
| sections of content pages helps anyone. For example, modals are
| often a cheat to escape good content design. Also, every site
| that I have made an effort to implement accessibility had SEO
| benefits.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| What is accessibility, exactly?
|
| I think the name says a lot: access ability.
|
| To me, it means allowing to access.
|
| There is no word disability anywhere in there. It has nothing to
| do with disability.
|
| It is about thinking ahead about different scenarios and
| situations you users could find themselves in and trying to
| address them.
|
| Is a slow or unreliable connection an accessibility issue?
|
| Well, does it prevent someone from accessing your service?
|
| What if someone has an older browser and has no control over it,
| unable to upgrade either the device or the software?
|
| Will your service refuse service to them?
|
| Vision impaired and such "extreme" accessibility challenges are
| only the tip of the iceberg, and I think most Web developers
| today are hiding their head in the sand, creating a rather rude
| experience for all except those privileged enough to be both
| physically able and not situationally impaired.
| rado wrote:
| Yes, of course.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| At the university, no less, I could never get my web
| accessibility push validated by anyone. It was awful.
|
| Finally, I flipped the script. Making something more accessible
| _generally_ gives it more SEO juice, in my experience (such as it
| was back then), and I could always sell people on _that_.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-24 23:03 UTC)