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0 pointsCthulhu_2y ago0 comments

This is, to be blunt, narrow-sighted; most accessibility support is rooted in best practices for every user. Screen readers are only one use case, other things that people don't even consciously think about and take for granted when they use a webpage or app are things like zooming in, focus/reader modes, light/dark modes, performance, print views, copy/pasting content, SEO / searchability, bookmarkability (e.g. headings & anchors in webpages, also used by screen reader users to quickly navigate a page), etc.

99.99% of accessibility things are covered if you just follow normal, established software development practices. Unfortunately, a lot of software developers overcomplicate things, for example by adding modal dialogs to websites. Modals are common and established design patterns in desktop apps, but not so in web and mobile apps. Applying one environment's UX patterns to another is asking for trouble.

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dimmke2y ago

>most accessibility support is rooted in best practices for every user.

This isn't quite true, when you get into things like using aria attributes. I definitely wouldn't put it at 99.99%. And I think a lot of vendors of accessibility software get to skate where others would have their feet held to the fire. They could be doing more to make their software easier to use and for developers to make it accessible.

I used to work as a contractor for the CDC, so I have experience in web development that is held to a higher accessibility standard (we had an actual real person who would verify our work and certify that it was accessible.)

Some things that come to mind are color contrast ratios where you have to pass different levels (AA vs. AAA) https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

And being able to navigate a site with a keyboard, or announce when sections change. That stuff isn't automatic. It might be baked into whatever framework you're using, but those frameworks have bugs too.

Here's an example I ran into with React Native, and it's still not clear if they ever fixed it or if it just got closed as stale: https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/27989