I'm sure it often does, but these articles tend not to mention a downside, which is that increasing costs of production tend to favor larger organizations that can afford to do what it takes to...
I'm sure it often does, but these articles tend not to mention a downside, which is that increasing costs of production tend to favor larger organizations that can afford to do what it takes to serve everyone.
Doing accessibility and internationalization properly are large projects for someone (or, realistically, a team) writing a new browser, editor, UI framework, or programming language. There is a whole genre of articles like Text Rendering Hates You and Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names.
Advocates of various issues always believe the cost is worth it, because it is to the group they're advocating for. But it's still a cost, and it leads to a software monoculture when most programmers give up on dealing with complexity themselves all use the same library.
At least it's for a good cause, unlike, say, emojis.
Thanks for sharing! I'm starting a web development certificate in the Spring, and I plan to focus on accessibility. I'm a little worried my classes won't incorporate it as much as I want, but I'm...
Thanks for sharing! I'm starting a web development certificate in the Spring, and I plan to focus on accessibility. I'm a little worried my classes won't incorporate it as much as I want, but I'm following accessibility experts and disabled activists on a fresh Twitter account. I found and followed Hidde de Vries after reading the article.
At my current job I'm trying to get the company to be more accessible (starting with our website, which has lots of issues). It's a bit difficult because people seem to want business reasons to do it; "it's the right thing to do" and "we could literally be sued" apparently aren't quite good enough, even for a company focused on progressive values. Alas.
I'm disabled, so making the web more accessible to fellow disabled folks is very important to me personally. At this point I'd rather not make something at all than put something out there that's inaccessible. If things are built from the ground up as accessible, as opposed to retrofitted, it's actually not that expensive - it just takes knowing how to code things properly, which is where most people's knowledge seems lacking. If every developer knew how to do this, we wouldn't need lawsuits and companies that audit websites and programs. (We'd probably still need some testing by disabled folks, but hey. Not a bad thing to pay people for their time.)
I'm sure it often does, but these articles tend not to mention a downside, which is that increasing costs of production tend to favor larger organizations that can afford to do what it takes to serve everyone.
Doing accessibility and internationalization properly are large projects for someone (or, realistically, a team) writing a new browser, editor, UI framework, or programming language. There is a whole genre of articles like Text Rendering Hates You and Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names.
Advocates of various issues always believe the cost is worth it, because it is to the group they're advocating for. But it's still a cost, and it leads to a software monoculture when most programmers give up on dealing with complexity themselves all use the same library.
At least it's for a good cause, unlike, say, emojis.
Thanks for sharing! I'm starting a web development certificate in the Spring, and I plan to focus on accessibility. I'm a little worried my classes won't incorporate it as much as I want, but I'm following accessibility experts and disabled activists on a fresh Twitter account. I found and followed Hidde de Vries after reading the article.
At my current job I'm trying to get the company to be more accessible (starting with our website, which has lots of issues). It's a bit difficult because people seem to want business reasons to do it; "it's the right thing to do" and "we could literally be sued" apparently aren't quite good enough, even for a company focused on progressive values. Alas.
I'm disabled, so making the web more accessible to fellow disabled folks is very important to me personally. At this point I'd rather not make something at all than put something out there that's inaccessible. If things are built from the ground up as accessible, as opposed to retrofitted, it's actually not that expensive - it just takes knowing how to code things properly, which is where most people's knowledge seems lacking. If every developer knew how to do this, we wouldn't need lawsuits and companies that audit websites and programs. (We'd probably still need some testing by disabled folks, but hey. Not a bad thing to pay people for their time.)