Accessibility is sorely needed everywhere but it’s pretty wild that they’re tackling it online before tackling it in the real world.
One of my close friends here in NL can’t use the train station in their neighborhood because they use a wheelchair and the platform can only be reached by stairs. They would need to go to the station in the city center, but busses aren’t wheelchair accessible, so they would need to call an expensive and extremely inconvenient transportation service. So they pretty much never travel.
There are almost no bathrooms in public and the ones that do exist are not free and are usually not accessible to people with many kinds of physical disabilities. In my city center the only bathroom is in a mall, which does have an elevator between the parking garage and the ground floor, but not to the bathrooms, which are one floor higher.
Old cities are hard to retrofit! But if this super rich country, world-renowned for amazing infrastructure and creative architecture, hasn’t tackled this problem yet, we have a bigger problem. It’s a cultural issue.
Every person will become disabled at some point, unless they suddenly and tragically die early.
That sounds cool in theory, but just adds cost for independent studios when making something new. And while some of the guidelines are easy to follow and don’t add pretty much any work, some of them are hard to implement.
You’re not allowed to build a restaurant in Sweden without making sure it’s accessible. Why would the restaurant’s website be any different?
Because I don’t live in Sweden?
Anyway, together with few people we’re currently building an app with no funding outside our pockets and no developers outside two of the founders, me included. This is costing us a lot of time and money (tens of thousands € so far) and having to make it accessible is gonna add a significant cost to something that already costs a lot.
I wanted to add accessibility later, sometimes next year, but this means I’ll have to do it before we go live which will postpone it and stretch our budget even more.
I’m not talking about something like VC funded businesses, but small independent businesses trying to create something new that captures a piece of the market and helps people while making us money.
If you live in the EU it’s likely the same regulations apply you as they do in Sweden. Why should a restaurant be allowed to not build something that’s accessible?
I live in the EU and no, it’s not mandatory. EU really is not as homogeneous as people seem to think.
Sure, you might live in one of the former “eastern countries” where the delta is bigger, but this is getting homogenized across the union.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32019L0882
What a wild image choice
With the description “At the studios of New Graphic in Dublin, designers work with clients to make their websites more accessible”.
The new act means that any kind of digital product, be it a website, an app, or an ATM, needs to be accessible
Is there some kind of rulebook to follow or is this some kind of vague requirement like “be good in life”? If there isn’t a checklist or something for people and companies to tick off, then I don’t see how this will be successful.
Actually, I found the annexes on the page for the European Accessibility Act, but they aren’t very specific. If I had to create an “accessible product”, that annex would be of very little help as it states often “it has to be accessible”.
Accessibility is very important, it’s great that the EU cares, and this is a big step, but I can’t help but feel it doesn’t really hit the mark.
The WCAG standards (Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium) for accessibility have existed since the mid 2000’s. I feel like following the industry standard for accessibility would likely go a long way towards defending yourself legally, as well as making any necessary website changes when asked, if feasible.
I’m afraid, once more, it’s something they are going to pat themselves on the back. “EU great US bad!” They might get a few more quids off Facebook, Google Amazon etc… But it won’t change anything in the end.
A bit like the French pushing for food quality when a huge share of their agricultural production is tainted with high doses of Cadmium.
But not for US websites, we don’t want to anger the Orange right?
The Americans with Disabilities Act covers that, and generally complying with WCAG standards is good enough.
https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/wcag3-intro/
Couple years ago Dominos got rocked for not having a ADA compliant site
https://www.boia.org/blog/the-robles-v.-dominos-settlement-and-why-it-matters
The elderly? I can already go into settings and make the fonts larger, or Shift+ to make everything bigger for my failing eyesight. As far as keyboards and meese, just make the ones designed around ergonomics affordable. Anything that is accepting of my arthritic fingers would be good for everyone. Subsidies for open source projects that include accessibility would also help. With their limited resources, accessibility, too often, gets relegated to “maybe later” status. Corporations can raise prices, open source projects might die on the vine without help.
I’m all for this but please can it be facilitated in a non-intrusive way for people who don’t need accessibility options? I’m fed up with having popups on every single website I visit telling me to opt out or in for cookie settings, I’d really rather not have another popup saying “Would you like to use our accessibility functions? OK or Cancel”
My son has been working on this for his company’s websites for the last while. He had worked on a lot of design for accessibility while in college so was happy to take on responsibility for it.
A lot of it is e.g. proper keyboard navigation and making sure it’s set up well for screen readers, colourblind folks etc.
proper keyboard navigation
- Goes on shitty website that doesn’t play nice with password managers
- Enters username
- Presses Tab
- Begins typing password in the now highlighted ‘forgot username’ element
- Unfathomable rage
- Tabs and types again
- Presses Enter
- Nothing happens
- Continues to mash Tab, trying to find when the submit button element will select
- Break, and click the button like an animal
Belt sander pillows for the people that design this shit, please.
That is some really wholesome work! You must be very proud of your son. Thanks for the insight into behind the scenes :)
Thank you. I am so, so proud. He has turned out a beautiful man. One of my best friends is in a wheelchair and hung out with us a lot when he was growing up so he saw the things he struggled with and really embraced accessibility in college (he did product design).
Here’s a funny text conversation we had earlier.
As a disabled person, we get pretty fed up with a pervasive lack of accessibility options literally everywhere, everyday, constantly, forever. Both online and offline.
I agree that cookie popups are stupid but they’re pretty easily avoidable with a browser extension. If the accessibility options are unnecessarily intrusive there will surely be countless extensions as well.
Idk it’s kind of tone deaf to preemptively complain about the mere possibility that accessibility options might inconvenience you in some teeny tiny and completely solvable way. Oh no won’t someone think of the non-disabled people.
Accessibility options are often invisible to the average user, as they’re things like alt text describing images.
Exactly :)
I’ve worked as a dev for the national health service in the UK, and all new government services promote a high standard of accessibility. We did a lot of in-person testing with users in labs, in rooms with the one-way mirrors like in a police interview and everything! Users with physical needs, and also users who are simply older, or have low tech literacy.
“Accessibility” covers a huge spectrum This can be the obvious things you might imagine like alt text on images, screen reader compatibility and dyslexic-friendly fonts, but it’s so much more.
We’re talking about things like ensuring good text contrast on all elements, making everything desktop and mobile responsive, using clear and simple language for instructions, and making the steps and user journey straightforward and easy to navigate.
A lot of accessibility concerns don’t only make the service better for people with specific needs, they make it overall better for everyone.
UK government websites are an excellent example of functional and complex websites done well. And a lot of it is open source as well.
Good luck catering to the willfully (learned helplessness) tec- inept old.
