I remember when I was in the app-writing business, and our devs would be constantly trying to bump up the minimum OS version supported. “See here, it says that only 10% of customer devices are on OS version 10.1 and below. We must bump our minimum version to 10.2 because us developers are tired of supporting this old shit and legacy code paths!”
This seems to me to be a lot like a salesman simply hanging up on 1 out of 10 of their potential customers. Makes no sense to me, but the version bumpers seem to be winning. The number of apps that no longer support my iPhone 7 is growing and growing…
For example, I'd suspect that people who stay on old iPhone's are less likely to spend money on apps. But it's a small, very unfounded suspicion.
I'd be curious to see if anything works out though in how stuff like that lines up.
I'm thinking specifically of a 3rd party camera app, or maybe one of these modern 3D mapping apps that uses LIDAR to model a room. These apps can (and should!) continue to work on the hardware they were developed for, even if the author bumps the minimum version past what is supported. If the app author builds in reliances on a web api that expects an up-to-date companion app, that was/is shortsighted and should be discouraged.
This makes sense if that 10% are costing more money than they generate, which seems especially likely since people that are frugal enough to (for example) hang onto an iPhone 7 are also unlikely to spend much on other frivolous purchases.
Supporting those older devices can range from supporting multiple code paths due to different APIs, or fallbacks for missing HW performance and/or features. All of that adds up in terms of developer time, build/infra cost, etc.
I could feel my soul leaving my body while reading this
I'd also wager few apps have everyone in the world as active users, which is the next sentence in the article.
Just my unsolicited, non-expert advice: don't make your writing more generic just to appeal to a wider audience.
Really it shouldn't be up to the developer it should be up to the disabled person to buy tools. Just like someone may need to buy a wheelchair to move around, they should have to buy a specialty browser that handles their limited visibility needs or brail tool interface.
No, that’s the wrong analogy. The ADA is there to ensure that people with wheelchairs can find a barrier-free entrance to a building, and a curb cut at an intersection.
It should be on us, the developers, to ensure our apps work with the tools of the trade to enable people with limitations. So, our apps should be usable by screen readers. The screen reader is the analogue to the wheelchair here.
This is one of the great things about HTML. Even ignorant / lazy / time-constrained developers are likely to output something that sorta works, just since they’re using divs and imgs and whatnot.
And the bar is so low! Adding accessibility labels takes not much effort at all. And, as an added bonus, accessible apps are easier to test, since testing frameworks like Playwright can hook into accessibility info directly to validate assertions.
> It should be on us, the developers, to ensure our apps work with the tools of the trade to enable people with limitations Why? I argue it should be on the disabled person.
> The bar is so low. Not really. There are groups of lowers running around looking for people to shake down for ADA misses. To really protect yourself it takes a lot of time.
> Really it shouldn't be up to the developer it should be up to the disabled person to buy tools. Just like someone may need to buy a wheelchair to move around, they should have to buy a specialty browser that handles their limited visibility needs or brail tool interface.
How can buying a specialty browser solve a problem of a blind person needing alt text for images?
You, as a developer, can determine when AI-generated text is good enough for your images—sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. A specialty browser cannot, and should not, be trusted to make that decision, so it will need hints from the developer. And, once the developer offers those hints, any mainstream browser, not just specialty products, can make use of them.
> How can buying a specialty browser solve a problem of a blind person needing alt text for images? If a picture is worth a thousand words you're never going to get the alt text right. There can always be complaints it's not good enough. Look at what happened to Dominoes. They made efforts but it wasn't good enough.
Did they? Because the suit alleges that they did not have alt text.
> each place has a phone line that can be called.
Ok but what if the person has troubles talking or hearing or dialing the phone?
Accessibility doesn't even take that long. I updated a site I run to be compliant in less than a day. Corporations can afford to meet regulations.
Edit:
According to the lawsuit the phone number was not added too the website until after.
Also from the lawsuit
> But there are substantial reasons to believe that the phone number does not provide the same level of independence and convenience as does the website and the mobile app. In particular, as the district court noted, "callers may experience delays and be placed on hold." Pet. App. 24a. Ambient noise may distract from and interfere with the accurate taking of orders. See p. 8, supra. And giving a credit card number to a live human being over the phone may create a greater risk to privacy than does submitting that information through a secure website. See DCt. Dkt. No. 33 at 15.
This is pure nonsense. So what if you may experience delays or be put on hold. Just because something exists doesn't mean you're obligated to provide it.
"credit card number to a live human being over the phone may create a greater risk to privacy" is absurd, it's the way people been taking credit cards from inception to very recently, either it's not good enough and should be banned all together or it's an acceptable means of charging a card. Plus there is protection from the CC company.
I think that a big part of why it sucks is that people feel comfortable expressing the idea that working to allow people of all abilities to enjoy the same conveniences is wasting time.
Why don't they just use high contrast? Why is readability so unfashionable?
Which then makes it downright painful for someone with regular eyesight, who sets their monitor to high contrast to improve photo rendering. Grey-on-grey is the only website design that doesn't make me immediately back away.
What's so wrong with black text on a white background that it's considered extreme?
Extreme? The WCAG standard for text most organizations use (Level AA) is 4.5:1 with 1:1 being black-on-black and 21:1 being black-on-white (or vice versa). The higher standard (Level AAA) is only 7:1. Most people wouldn't want to read your content if everything was 7:1 or lower.
> Facebook has long resorted to using AI descriptions
Facebook didn't upload those images, their users did, Facebook isn't responsible for them having good text alternatives.
> Just like someone may need to buy a wheelchair to move around
To go along with your poor analogy, blind people have "wheelchair" equivalents, called screen readers. They're useless if don't build "ramps" that meet established building standards, websites and apps that follow established standards.
Surely you could've shared your take on the actual substance of the post?