I was always wondering why there’s no real audio-based interface for blind people, instead of trying to describe what’s on the screen. Have this ever been tried out?
Programming for accessibility is one of these things that I always fascinated me, and it makes me sad that support for it no longer matters for a lot of software developers. Maybe it’s something I am going to try to do? Is there any documentation where to start with that?
I have a web music player that I’ve developed, and while it was never really intended to be used by others, I thought I had generally followed accessibility best practices. After using it for about two years, I realized that I never even implemented keyboard shortcuts. 🫠
Which is to say, one shouldn’t assume devs to know what they’re doing. At some point, I’m also just a user and I use software like everyone else does, meaning I pick out a path that works for me and then I hardly look left and right from there.
Features not being tested when you don’t use them yourself, that happens with any feature. But it’s much worse for UI features, because those are difficult to automate tests for. And accessibility is in an even worse spot, because it necessarily opens up a separate path, which is going to be invisible to me as a user, so it gets covered by neither automated tests nor by me just using the software.I have to go out of my way to test accessibility, which means I have to be aware that a change I’m making might introduce a regression. That’s genuinely how lots of amateur developers work, which is probably the best explanation why accessibility support is often so amateur-ish…
This is a really well written article. It’s unfortunate that this person has to deal with all these issues.
I suspect the reason that both MATE and the Debian installer have good accessibility support is because their codebases are quite old. In general, it seems like older software is more likely to have better accessibility support than newer software.
Accessibility should be something that’s built into software from the very beginning, but I totally understand that not all developers have time for it or properly understand it. It’s unfortunate.
Edit: I forgot to mention that accessibility is going to be mandated for some types of sites and apps in the EU thanks to the European Accessibility Act (EAA) coming into effect later this year, which should help somewhat. Won’t really help with Linux itself though.
I was about to say that I’ve been using Debian for the better part of 20 years, and the accessibility support is pretty good.
One thing I’ve had troubles with when trying to implement accessibility is in web dev. There’s so many attribute tags and I think a few different software based standards as well? I’m not entirely sure. The documentation on it felt a bit hard to follow and implement. Then I’m not sure how to go about testing it fully either without having those proprietary softwares either. I’m on an all Linux machine and the only accessibility software I know of is Orca and it’s so and so last time I tried it.
While I slowly figure that out however I make sure to follow tag recommendations and keep things in sections, only one h1 tag per page, descriptive and short alt tags, and so forth. At least that helps a tiny bit.
Web is a bit easier than native since the browsers handle all the platform-specific details across all common platforms, and you mostly just have to follow some guidelines that aren’t overly technical or arcane. Some examples:
- Use ARIA roles where appropriate
- Ensure sufficient contrast between text and background colours. Should at least meet the WCAG level AA which is a 4.5:1 contrast ratio, but ideally meet AAA which is a 7:1 ratio for body text and a 4.5:1 ratio for headings.
- Ensure you use
<label>tags to label for all your<input>s,altattributes on all images,titleattributes where appropriate (e.g. on<table>s to describe the data contained inside the table), etc.
If you use Firefox, its developer tools have an “Accessibility” tab that can audit for common issues - things like missing labels on checkboxes and radio buttons, colours that don’t meet WCAG contrast ratio requirements, etc.
It’s a good time to learn more about building accessible sites and apps given it’s becoming a legal requirement in some jurisdictions. For example, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) goes into effect later this year, and it mandates that sites and mobile apps for various industries (like ecommerce, airlines and other transport, media streaming, social media, banks, and some others) meet accessibility guidelines.
I’m on an all Linux machine and the only accessibility software I know of is Orca and it’s so and so last time I tried it.
It’s probably worth spinning up a Windows VM to test in NVDA. It’s one of the most popular screen readers and probably the most popular open-source one, but only works on Windows since it deeply hooks into the Microsoft Speech API, accessibility APIs, and and other Windows APIs.
Dan… I fucking love you. Thank you for this writeup. Not only is it helpful but it gives me encouragement to continue finding ways and figure things out.
I couple years back when I did my photography education we had an assignment to create a photo book as our final “exam” thing. I decided to document and show the daily life of a blind man and his tools and what he’s had to go through as his blindness got worse over the years. He showed me how he uses his computer and phone and such so I really really saw the importance of accessibility.
Somewhat luckily I’ve been able to keep the forms somewhat sane due to using component libraries which implement accessibility well. I always make my things in SvelteKit which does have good support for accessibility and I always keep my colours contrasty with as close to as AAA as possible because it’s easier on my own eyes too hahaha.
There’s a national deaf-blind association nearby and I’ve been thinking of going there to chat about accessibility and website usage with them one day.
I’m working on digitizing the book I made into a website and of course want to make that website extroniously accessible so even a blind person can hear through descriptive wording of what’s happening in the images. I also plan to make a scrolly-type thing using as little JS as possible which is nicely achievable now with the CSS scroll modifiers that’s been added over the years.
It’s going to be exciting to see how everything will work out. I can’t thank you enough, while my only computer is a Steam Deck where running VMs is a bit so and so I’m gonna see if I can use some public computer or see if someone in the association can help me test things out and fix things from there.
Insightful article. I have to confess I never realized the accessibility situation was this bad.
I also want to highlight this excerpt from the comments:
Making things accessible isn’t hard technically. But it requires coordination and people to care about it enough to work on it at the expense of other features. If [I] developed an application on a team and said I had ‘one security guy that works on that stuff as long as it doesn’t interfere with the rest of our work’ I’d be dragged over the coals and have my project forked by the public.
But with accessibility? There’s really no sense of priority or urgency despite it being broken for years and not putting much effort in to fixing it.
i think a good example is text size. My eyesight isnt horrible but it isnt great either so some small text can be hard to read for me. But in gnome in accessibility there is just a toggle for “large text” so i can either make all text fucking massive, or have it be normal. Other than that the most i can do is try to change specific font settings and fiddle with it constantly for each application lol. This could be fixed by just having a slider instead of a toggle in gnomes text accessibility options and letting you choose between a few different sizes.
This is devastating and truly an indictment on the “code it yourself” mentality that is leaving accessibility as an exercise for the user… which is the opposite of accessibility.
This should be shared far and wide.
I understand the problem of “code it yourself”. But if they won’t code it themselves, and it ought to exist, who has to? Everything that is provided is provided for free and with love and passion. If something is lacking in that there are only a few options. Including code it yourself or pay someone to code it for you. The only reason you get anything at all is because of the “code it yourself” attitude of the people who developed the software in the first place, as well as their willingness to share it.
Woah their partner, major software developers have been having similar issues with accessibility for decades now. For instance the ability for the blind to deal with Windows if it crashes or errors out is pretty much non-existent.
https://nfb.org/sites/default/files/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm15/bm1504/bm150403.htm
Google isn’t much better breaking accessability in the name of protecting content.
So I will have to respectfully tell you to get off your high horse.
If that’s how you feel why not tell the author to get off their high horse considering I am just echoing their sentiment.
Please read the article I referenced. Most of their gripes are also issues found in Windows. Also OP’s article is clearly written from a constructive criticism point of view that I appreciate. Keeping software accessible is hard work and proprietary software is not some magic bullet.
I think you are taking this all out of context hence why I told you to get off your high horse. Apparently you decided to climb onto an even higher horse instead. You are not echoing anything but your rather alarmist perspective. See below for excerpts about Windows accessability.
"A concrete example of a product that simply cannot be used by the blind, but which is an integral security component used in employment situations, is Microsoft’s BitLocker software, which provides full disk encryption. BitLocker requires the user to enter a PIN (personal identification number) before the full Windows operating system is started. While competing full-disk encryption programs have offered the ability to generate an audible tone that can be used to alert the blind user that information needs to be entered, BitLocker offers no such indication. Despite years of repeated entreaties by blind people for Microsoft to fix this problem, we have yet to see a version of BitLocker that addresses this issue. A blind employee who is required to use a computer with Microsoft BitLocker installed will be unable to turn the computer on and get it running—not to mention use it.
Microsoft SharePoint, a program used by many institutions (many of which employ the blind), is not fully accessible to the blind. SharePoint has been found to be so frustrating for the nonvisual user that a third-party vendor believes that it can sell an add-on solution to large enterprises (e.g., state or federal agencies) that costs as much as $12,000 for a single user license. If Microsoft’s accessibility effort were working, a product that is as widely used as SharePoint would already be as convenient and effective for the nonvisual user as it is for everyone else.
There does not appear to be any user-experience research being conducted by Microsoft into improving efficiency for keyboard-only users, including the blind. This has already had a negative impact on keyboard-only users of the spell checker in Word 2013, which no longer provides accelerator keys to speed up the selection of options when spelling errors are detected.
Microsoft struggles to implement an API (application program interface) which makes it easier for screen-access software to get information about application states, messages, and controls. Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) and User Interface Automation (UIA), two examples of existing accessibility APIs, have existed within the Windows operating system for many years, but they have apparently not done much to solve the accessibility problem. While I applaud the fact that Microsoft has worked hard to ensure that Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 have worked with updated releases of screen-access software on the day they were released to the public, it must also be recognized that, in order for this to have happened, the screen-access software vendors (very small companies in relation to Microsoft) had to devote considerable resources to make this happen. It would be better if these relatively small companies could spend more time and effort coming up with innovations that improve the efficiency and productivity of blind users of their software.
Unlike its main competitors on desktop and mobile platforms, Microsoft has failed to provide built-in support for refreshable Braille displays to be connected to and used on its various platforms. This is particularly vexing for users who are both deaf and blind for whom refreshable Braille displays are the only way to interact with computer software. The Apple Macintosh and the Apple iPhone support a variety of refreshable Braille displays without requiring the customer to install device-specific drivers, and these products entered the market well after Microsoft began working on accessibility.
The maintenance, setup, and recovery of Microsoft Windows continue to be inaccessible to the blind. Consequently, there is an added cost in time and/or money to the blind user, who has to bring in (and often pay for) sighted assistance to install, upgrade, or repair a Windows system. This situation is unacceptable—especially given the fact that Apple OS X and iOS operating systems incorporate accessibility tools that enable the blind computer user to perform maintenance, upgrade, and recovery tasks without sighted assistance. Moreover, this problem curtails the ability of the blind to accept Windows system support jobs in information technology."
Whataboutism is never a good look.
At no point did I even begin to insinuate proprietary code is better. That’s you deciding that is what I must mean despite me not mentioning it at all.
But please, keep trying to educate me about something I did not say.
Not actually understanding what is being said or what is going on and completely lacking perspective is not a good look.
I read the entire posted article… Did you?
Can you point to where I said that proprietary software is better at this?
What a hyporcritical fucking take from someone making quite a lot of assumptions of what I meant.
Maybe you ought to work harder on understanding what other people say before you go putting words in their mouths.
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“Built for control, but not for people” sums up so well what’s wrong with the developer-user disconnect among many in the free software space.
I think it has to do with neurodivergence, where a lot of people who use their computers 12+ hours a day can’t fathom that there are other people who don’t do the same.
Just stay positive and keep going as hard as that can be sometimes it’s just like anything else the more of it you do the better you get.
