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Comment by swiley | Hacker News Reader

That was definitely one of the more readable articles on the front page. IMO if more web developers where blind like this guy then maybe the web would be more readable.

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It's the one reason I positively hate all the eye candy and executable pages on the web. Accessibility went right out the window at some point, but it was actually a cornerstone of the web that the reader should determine what a page should look (or sound) like.

Now, you could of course craft a page that would still work well on screen readers and that at the same time does the whole dog-and-pony show on more capable browsers. But in practice that doesn't really happen.

Many pages which are in fact just text pages once rendered simply won't render or will render very badly with javascript off.

Get blind employees/coworkers. You'll find that you'll be making damn sure your page is accessible. I enjoy it a lot because you don't generally think about it, but accessibility does affect many people.

This is a very valid point. All the pages produced by the places I've worked at were 100% accessible, mainly because the developers could see that I am unable to use the website, and I told them how easy it is to make content accessible. It is really simple once you do know that it is possible, and having a blind colleague who serves as a human tester is, as you said, really cool in this regard.

And not only as a reminder, like I said before, but most of the time I don't even know how to use the accessibility tools! So it's very nice to have someone who knows what they're doing tell you "I can't read this".

This is also how I discovered what a clusterfuck the Android accessibility tools are. Talkback before Marshmallow is atrocious (as in very obviously buggy), I'm going to test the new Talkback now and see.

I personally find it unfair to make the whole web seem bland to a majority of people, so that a minority would find it easy to access. However, I believe that teaching developers about their responsibility to their fellow human beings, even in theory, would go a long way in reducing stuff that looks well, but is not usable to the blind.

What you mentioned about accessibility features being available but not being used in practice is not only in the web. You get the same thing in Android and IOS applications as well. I have always wondered about how we can fix this, but to be honest, I have never found a solution, sadly.

No, honestly this is more readable for sited people too (speaking as one). I am 100% for a "bland" web.

Thank you. I'm glad to know that sighted people were looking for readable articles as much as I am.

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