devRant - A fun community for developers to connect over code, tech & life as a programmer

There's too many web apps out there that advertise having great accessibility, but whose only claim to that is that they work okay-ish with screenreaders.

There's more to accessibility, darnit! Not just blind people, also remember people with impaired colour perception, people who have to use increased font sizes, people with poor contrast perception (can we please not do light-gray text, links, or buttons on white background anymore?), and many more.

The amount of apps alone that just are impossible to use properly with increased font sizes due to cut-off unscrollable text or buttons pushed out of the visible part of the page is staggering. Or where you get permanently stuck inside a rich-text editor if you can only navigate by keyboard, or where whole parts of the page are impossible to properly use with background images turned off...

I'm aware this might sound unreasonable and I know it's extra effort to learn all the rules, but once these things are not an afterthought, but rather something to take care of starting even during first implementation, it starts to come naturally.

But would it be unreasonable to ask of an architect to not put the restrooms, conference rooms, managers office, where they can only be reached by stairs? I don't think it would be. Sure it makes placing them more complicated, but excluding people from being able to use the building due to circumstances beyond their control feels a bit elitist and snobby to me.

Saw an app last week where a lot of features were behind click-handlers on elements that are not supposed to be interactive like <div>, <li>, and <span> tags. How's someone who can't use the visual clues even supposed to know that the element is interactive?

And yes, there's some of these points where ensuring accessibility is not just the devs job but also the designer's responsibility (contrast rules for example), but in my experience if the devs notice "oh hey, this could be problematic" then the design people usually listen.

Honestly in the case of accessibility I believe that putting off some features for later to make time to ensure that what's there is accessible, even if it only affects 1% of visitors, belongs into the "social responsibility" category, and most clients I've worked with were open to the subject.

I do believe it's something that everyone should take time to learn.

PS: I don't mean to attack anyone, I just wish it were something that more people watch out for.