Accessibility is a Harsh Mistress

diveintomark.org

17 points__2 comments

“You realize no one is ever actually going to do any of this, right?” There was an awkward silence as the people who had spent their lives in the trenches of access enablement contemplated the very real possibility that no one would ever benefit from their work." QUOTED

Haha, thats the problem with accessibility its hard to know when anyone is really going to use it with a screenreader, more then likely you are just wasting your time.

I'm actually writing some (custom internal) software for blind folk at the moment, as an extension of having worked with a small nonprofit for visually disabled people for general volunteer work (mostly admining the network and teaching). Through this I also found myself taking a look at the needs of blind users all over the place, and they do exist. I've had one dev tell me that it's stupid to prematurely work on accessibility, until it came up that most of my blind friends didn't end up using that software because it was inaccessible and that they probably would at least take a look at it if it were. Soooooo..

(edit: not to say that that detracts from the original article. i think all the points brought up are valid and very frustrating on all sides. yes, often times the changes that are "accessibility 'best' practices" are complete BS and some of the accessibility advocacy groups are annoying...I wish life were easier.)

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