... unless you're working in a space allowed to discriminate against users that need assistive access to your content of course, in which case you can spring for the WYSIWYG dream.
I don't think that's actually where we are though. As you touch on, code is inherently necessary in order to build responsive pages. A static layout will never know how to reflow itself when the window size changes; it needs code to define that behavior.
I know what you mean wrt fixed-width layouts, but want to point out that reflow is the default browser behavior in the absence of problematic markup and styling rules. That's the beauty of mobile-first RWD and progressive enhancement when done right; the starting point is just the content, full stop. The first media query is the absence of support for media queries. Then min-width rules to guide layout changes across progressively larger breakpoints.
This is no longer true. CSS grid solves this completely.
And for those who cannot, there can and should be a simple htmltext fallback.
But that should not cripple the manority who enjoy nice looking things, which are way easier to achieve with WYSIWYG tools which is why flash was loved among designers.
Assistive access to content is an afterthought for almost everyone in software, and that's perfectly fine. It's an extremely uncommon and unnecessary use case for nearly the entire device-using population.
It's not perfectly fine - it's illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
What you have cited here is an issue of compliance for certain public services and commercial products, and you are attempting to justify thought police and the private regulation of development of software standards/protocols with it.
EDIT: Also, would you care to explain how the ADA has any impact on anyone's behavior outside of the United States?
However because of the way US law works, you probably need context on court cases, such as the recent supreme court ruling:
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dominos-pizza-ll...
Going back to GG(G?)P, if you're writing software outside of the commercial or government space in the US, then maybe you're fine not complying with accessibility guidelines in the ADA, e.g. screen readers or what have you.
If you're outside of the US, then I don't know what protections there are.
But in the US, for commercial or government purposes, then yes, it's illegal in the above sense.
Edit:
borski above describes context pretty well too, since it depends on the commercial context in which you're operating
Edit 2:
also this latest ruling is new enough that we'll have to wait to see how the dust settles w.r.t. new lawsuits
Robles hasn't really shown that Dominoes failed to provide a _reasonable accommodation_, which is typically the key phrase in the ADA. Depending on the business, making a site accessible can be quite a costly project for quite a small number of customers. Finally, that case is only up for debate due to Dominoes' _physical presence_; Robles is arguing that he's being denied access to the physical stores, which pertains to prior rulings.
Robles claims Dominoes failed to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. Keep in mind that this standard has been created by private industry and _not_ by the government.
Interestingly, if anything is going to get Dominoes, I bet it will be the coupons available only via the web site or app. Anything else they could probably make the case phone/physical options are fine.
9th Circuit's over-ruling of the dismissal by district; can't say I agree with all of it, but worth reading: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/01/15/1...
The risk with making business decisions around language like "reasonable accomodation" is that the criteria for "reasonable" can change. I'm not an expert in the space, but the watchdogs I read are smelling a change in the wind direction towards increased scrutiny of web accessibility (relevant interest groups are watching the web eat e-commerce and are concerned about what that looks like if the accessibility drum isn't beaten hard early on in the process). Lawsuits like this are expected to increase in 2019.
The ADA is not software specific, but specifies that you must provide access. Courts have been increasingly interpreting that to include websites. See the recent Domino's case where the circuit court ruled the website must be accessible (the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so it is technically only binding precedent within the 9th circuit - western states, including California) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-dominos-pizza/u...
> EDIT: Also, would you care to explain how the ADA has any impact on anyone's behavior outside of the United States?
It isn't the ADA, but Europe has explicitly adopted WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards: https://www.w3.org/blog/2018/09/wcag-2-1-adoption-in-europe/
This is precisely how we get closer to the achievable goal of assistive accessibility becoming a non-concern in software. The WCAG is nowhere near the same thing as the ADA. In fact, as a person with one of the things that qualifies me as a person with a "disability" I consider the ADA an offensively non-viable and absurdly non-enforceable "law."
The fact is that we have many, MANY advocates who are all a lot nicer, more helpful, and more effective than Washington, DC.
... which is why we have laws to force people to do the right thing even when they don't have the right emotions behind it. I think we're coming at this from two different directions; the people I work with have come to learn that if you don't beat the drum more or less continuously, things don't get better.
Not nearly enough folks are inclined to be considerate; consideration without force of law just isn't good enough.
Of course, it is situational. Your main product or service should be accessible, but ancillary and blue-moon information is too expensive to keep compliant.
One org provided statistical reports to the public. But the format was not ADA-friendly, and reworking hundreds of reports would cost tens of millions. So they stopped providing the reports.
In addition, the ADA wouldn’t apply to non-US entities, either way.
Not saying I disagree with the idea in general; in fact, I think we should make our websites accessible because there is a large population of disabled folks who use the internet and should have access. But it’s absolutely not illegal, unless your online presence very closely mirrors a physical store. [3]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_v._Facebook,_Inc.
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouellette_v._Viacom_Internat....
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_B....
Any software professional knows just as well as I that these concerns are specialized and people with a particular interest in complying with these special use cases are paid for their particular interest and capability in worrying about, and complying with, regulations within the realm of assistive access.
Most software developers think about getting their software to work correctly, not about edge-cases dealing with the UI for tiny, specific disenfranchised groups of people.
EDIT: Even if we were just to stick to the US, only 2.7 million people use a wheelchair here. That's 0.9 percent of the US population. That's really, REALLY freakin' specialized. Don't stoop to heaving virtue my way when the facts hurt.
EDIT#2: Perhaps you can quantify your ridiculous statement by telling me how the developer of this [0] application should be punished for not building assistive access into his GPLv2 project, and how he should have & could have actually done so.
The whole point of the ADA (and its counterparts in some other developed nations), is that building solutions that are also usable by people with disabilities should no longer be an edge case, but the default.
> building solutions that are also usable by people with disabilities should no longer be an edge case, but the default.
should be the thing we pursue. This will happen when people who care about assistive access technologies finally make solutions that are easy to implement into normal contemporary software development workflow. Online video had the same challenges but due to corporate and commercial interests we solved that problem already, arguably a much harder problem to solve than assistive access. I know because for many years I worked on precisely these kinds of assistive access concerns in the audiobooks industry. I am certain that we are not there yet, but we will get there one day.
BUT...
> The whole point of the ADA
None of this is the point of the ADA. The only "whole point" of the ADA is to regulate particular aspects to certain commercial and government services/products.
Why wouldn't I? Your argument appears to boil down to "well not caring about blind users is the status quo, so no reason to change it". I can guarantee you there were similar attitudes among construction workers and architects before wheelchair ramps became mandatory in various jurisdictions (and hell, even after): "well the vast majority of people wanting to enter this building have working legs, so why should I be assed to build a ramp when a staircase will do?".
If you can't be assed to write software that's accessible to blind people, then that is - by definition - discrimination against them. It's not even hard to make a web page reasonably accessible; plain HTML (with or without CSS) is typically perfectly usable with a screen reader, and it's only when that gets mucked up by a tangled mess of DOM-mangling JS (or Flash or Java or Silverlight once upon a time) that anyone needs to actually put any significant effort into accessibility.
The fact is, nothing is, has been or ever will be completely fair. And that's okay. Everyone makes decisions based on their environment. Most accessibility laws are only applicable to organizations of a certain size, which isn't even most
But if the question is "Where do you set the bar," we already have laws for that. Are they too many?
For others, maybe not as much. In the end, it's a balancing game, and I keep seeing discussion (especially political) lose all sense of nuance or negotiation.
It really does and should be determined by the specific use case. Yes, most sites should be and many are pretty accessible by default. Using Axe, Wave, Lighthouse and other tools is easy enough and should absolutely be done as part of a web application's development. That doesn't mean that everyone who doesn't do it is someone who should be ostracized and cancelled by reactionary mobs.
Which is why it's not a bad idea to stick close to the base HTML spec unless you have a real good reason to deviate from it or use advanced features, JavaScript based animation, etc. Because HTML is a document format not a render format, staying close to home on the spec gives you a lot of accessibility for free. Not all of it, images of course are still just binary blobs without more metadata, but you cover a lot of ground.
A website in flash got approximately zero of that for free, and it was a known issue in that era. Accessibility suffered.
PDF's, for example, can be made accessible if created properly.
Restaurants can offer Braille menus. They aren't forced to put translations in Braille immediately next to every piece of text on the menu they give to everyone.
... granted, they're also screwing themselves over because anyone trying to integrate something like UberEats against them to provide delivery is gonna skip them over for the competitor with the more-easy-to-scrape online presence. ;)