Hacker News Reader

Comment by jazoom | Hacker News Reader

That's a really good point, and it's one of the drawbacks of designing a website for the 95%.

I haven't tested myself (I'm just one dude - there's a lot I'd like to do but haven't yet), but I see no reason why it wouldn't work well. I try to design semantically and everything is rendered server-side.

But, in reality, I don't think this is the kind of website that would be usable for a blind person anyway. There's not really anything to read. There would be much better ways for a blind person to get information than using this website.

View on HN

Vision impairment is a spectrum, so someone who can see to some extent may be using a screen reader to assist. People might be using your site at 150% zoom, etc etc.

One thing you can do is put a note somewhere easy to find that says "if you require assistance using this site, email someone@domain.org". Sites that I've worked on also had a phone number here but I understand that's an edge case.

You also mentioned alternative ways to get information - if there's ones you can link to (without linking to a competitor or whatever), there's no reason not to provide links.

Hi voltagex, thank you for your input.

I don't think this is the kind of website where I "help someone to use it". Instead of speaking in the abstract I may as well show you so you can see what I mean:

https://pricehipster.com

As you can see, the whole point of it is designed around quickly glancing at prices. And I don't think it makes sense to tell people other places they can find prices if they can't see well enough to use this website.

Okay - that makes sense.

It's been a while since I looked at things like this but have you done simple stuff like check whether the colour contrast ratio [0] meets WCAG standards?

What about making the orange highlight work when tabbing through the website with the keyboard?

What about having a Skip Navigation / Skip to Content link? [1]

0: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

1: https://webaim.org/techniques/skipnav/

Yes I keep those things in mind while developing. I may have missed one here or there, especially in any code from my early days of development.

Thanks for the link about "skipnav" I haven't heard that term before. I don't really see how that can fit in, though? I guess the category links right at the top of the page is the closest concept?

It doesn't make sense to skip down to item number 200 since there's no way to know what's down there. Best to look at items 1-199 first. That is the same for all users.

It's exactly to skip to the main block of content - every item in the nav menu may be read out individually (or at least needs to be tabbed through) otherwise.

Oh I understand now. It's skipping the menu itself. I don't know why I misread (skimmed) the link you posted. Yeah, I can see why that's useful. I'll add it to my to-do list to look more into that. Thanks!

I find their recommendation skipnav somewhat ironic - pages on that site with any sizable contents don't show any actual content until after the fold on my macbook, e.g. https://webaim.org/techniques/css/invisiblecontent/ .. the entire first page consists of various forms of navigation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com