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Comment by save_ferris | Hacker News Reader

I’m sensing some attitude issues just reading this, to be completely honest.

If your reaction to your library/product/whatever not taking off on HN is to get on HN and complain about it, you’re probably building whatever it is you’re building for the wrong reasons.

> I can see the problem, and some of the solutions - but other developers are simply not interested.

Developers are constantly marketed all kinds of solutions. You, the library author, have a responsibility to convince developers that the problem you’re working on is legitimate. If that’s not getting across, that’s on you.

> Maybe HN is trying to tell me that I would be better off developing a standup comedy routine?

Why would anyone want to take you or your work seriously after reading something like this?

View on HN

Web accessibility is a legitimate issue that every front-end developer needs to care about.

It is a legitimate issue.

But it also doesn't cause the developer enough pain to register as a priority. The market is telling you something: it either isn't painful enough to spend money on, or you're not reaching the right people. IMO, you can sell to developers, but you have better luck selling them something that feels like it gives them a superpower, e.g. React is an easy sell because:

1. Reactive binding burns away a lot of imperative state-changing code

2. Facebook branding implies it is industrial-strength

And even then, React costs them their time to learn, build on, and ship. If it's their company's time, then they're not going to value it the same way.

For everything you think someone else needs to care about, there are probably a 1000 other things as well.

It's not necessarily if people care but what they care more.

You have solved the problem of the considerable "extra" effort that web accessibility requires? Less than that, to be honest I'm not interested. If you have, well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Would you say that you have extraordinary proof?

Reading this back to myself, I think that I sound like an asshole, but it's my honest thought process fwitw.

> You have solved the problem of the considerable "extra" effort that web accessibility requires?

Have I 'solved' web accessibility for the <canvas> element? No. Have I coded up a JS canvas library that has, as one of its central aims, the idea that <canvas> elements can, and should, be made accessible? Yes - that's what I'm attempting to do. It is a work-in-progress; I guarantee that my solutions can be improved on: Rome wasn't built in a day.

> Would you say that you have extraordinary proof?

The results of my efforts to date can be seen on the library's home page. Criticisms and suggestions on how to make things work better are always welcome! https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/

It's true. The challenge is developing in a way that covers the wide range of human disabilities (e.g. vision to cognitive). WCAG will continue to evolve to try and capture the full range. That range of disabilities is why manual testing with a screen reader and a keyboard is the current best solution for uncovering edge cases where a website, or mobile app, is inaccessible.

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