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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Why much of the internet is closed off to blind people
As our everyday world moves increasingly online, the digital landscape presents new challenges for ensuring accessibility for the blind. A recent court challenge against Domino's pizza may be a watershed case guiding the rights of disabled people on the internet, writes James Jeffrey.
Each swipe 17-year-old Maysie Gonzales makes on her smart phone is accompanied by what sounds like the famous Stephen Hawking voice barking out orders at a relentless pace.
"Sometimes I speed it up to 350 words a minute, it depends what mood I am in," says Ms Gonzales, who lost her sight when she was two years old through retinal cancer.
Screen readers translate on-screen information into speech or Braille. They have broken open the internet for people who are blind or visually impaired, and for those with other disabilities.
But the device only works effectively on websites that are compatible.
"Sometimes it can be horrible, it depends on how the website has been set up," says Ms Gonzales.
If a website's digital infrastructure hasn't been correctly labelled, a blind person can be met with a barrage of "button! - button! - button!" or "link 1,752! - link 1,752! - link 1,752!" from that hyperactive mechanical-sounding voice.
Hence the case Guillermo Robles, who is blind, brought against Domino's Pizza after he was unable to use his screen reader to use the company's website and mobile app.
A federal court agreed with him, and now Domino's has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear Robles' case, in what could prove a landmark battle over the rights of disabled people on the internet.
"This isn't just about ordering the likes of pizza or surfing Amazon," says Chris Danielson, a representative with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). "People are doing everything online nowadays, so it's about blind people being able to access the likes of online banking, applying for employment and doing the necessary online tests, accessing cloud-based tools in the workplace, and all the rest."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday September 30 2019, @06:20AM (6 children)
One of the employees in a company I worked for years ago was color-blind, and tried to get the company to change the HTML in quite a few of our ticketing system's dashboards because it was showing whether tickets were overdue or not with a red or green dot. Trouble was, the ticketing system was a custom-made extension to SAP, and the contractor who coded the extension was asking $1,500 to change the code (customer lock-in, surprise surprise...) So my company was balking at the expense - understandably.
Eventually the guy took it up to the union rep, who took it up to labor mediation. Needless to say, the company lost.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @07:48AM (1 child)
That just seems short-sighted, since just under 10% of the population has some sort of color blindness. I guess that is why you should always include ADA compliance in your bid requests. Speaking of which, they should be happy that is all the guy did, as he could have brought the ADA against them and they'd be out a lot more than just the cost to recode.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @03:55PM
Isn't there a browser extension for the colorblind?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @01:02PM (1 child)
Amen
I am slowly lossing vision mainly size and color/contrast right now. The "Apple" look that everyone is doing is crap. Let me find the light words on white or dark gary background. It is hide and go seek. My favour description I have seen "Designers with 1 crayon in the box".
Also stupid fixes are just BAD. Plex hiding the high contrast mode 8 screens in. Should be on very FIRST screen. I have the same issue with ServiceNow. At best this option is lip service, since it is not on the first screen - even if that is log-on panel.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:05AM
I use "Flat UI brain rot", but I know what you mean.
Apart from hipster "designers" whose only qualification seems to be copying other hipsters, is there anyone, anywhere who actually likes the brain-rot appearance? It seems to be universally loathed, which is why it's surprising it's lasted this long.
(Score: 2) by progo on Monday September 30 2019, @06:27PM (1 child)
If I was a contractor I probably could have offered the client company a Greasemonkey script with a desktop installer for their officially supported browser, for $200. Vendor lock-in sucks, but sometimes a little brute force hacking can fix a small problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @08:53AM
Potentially violating the SAP license? No.
Greasemonkey? On a Prod server? No.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 30 2019, @06:24AM (7 children)
All my years in construction, we posted signs. "CAUTION: No blind people beyond this sign!"
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @06:42AM (4 children)
Lemme guess: you had someone hired to sweep every morning the remains of all blind people who didn't see the sign.
Never crossed your mind to double the sign in Braille, did it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @06:59AM (3 children)
If they can't see the sign, they sure as heck aren't going to feel along the wall to find and read it.
Really what are needed are braille rumblestrips in the sidewalk, so you can warn blind people with their feet instead of their hands or eyes.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday September 30 2019, @07:09AM (1 child)
Tactile pavements exist, and are used, for example, to mark the location of pedestrian road crossings in the UK. Also, in many places a line of raised dashes is moulded into or stuck onto flooring to show a route that visually impaired people can follow easily with their white stick.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @07:42AM
As someone with vision problems, tactile pavements are great. There are also other surfaces that have meaning too, once you learn the code. The funny thing is that a group of older people in my city are suing the city to remove them on public sidewalks under the ADA or state equivalent. Their major claim is that they are a tripping hazard for people with low mobility and there for interfere with their accessibility rights.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 30 2019, @07:47AM
Well, raise it higher and paint it in a fluorescent color then!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @07:25AM
"None are so blind, as Runaway1956."
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday September 30 2019, @09:33AM
Why would I need to be warned about a lack of blind people in the location beyond the sign? Is the lack of blind people hazardous in some way?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @07:12AM (1 child)
We may never figure out why unless we find a study by a progressive think tank.
PS: Probably discrimination.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday September 30 2019, @03:25PM
It sounds funny but actually you're just showing your ignorance - there are all kinds of amazing tools to help blind people navigate a world designed for seeing people, and as a result the web is (or at least should be - if done properly) very accessible. The very design of HTML - as a markup language rather than a layout tool - means that it should be easy for the right tool to render a page's content in whatever medium works best for the user be that braille, speech or simply very very very large text.
Of course web standards and de-facto usage have drifted away from that ideal over the years towards pretty, shiny, advert-friendly design, but that was always the idea and core of it is still out there.
BTW: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/apr/03/ed-jackson-rugby-interview-everest [theguardian.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @07:28AM (4 children)
So what about us deaf persons? Here I was, not realizing that I was being rick-rolled for hours, until my roomie has the decency to sign to me what was going on. Still don't see why it is such an annoyance.
(Score: 1) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday September 30 2019, @11:22AM
Huawei is currently advertising many features specific for deaf people on their devices.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday September 30 2019, @01:56PM (1 child)
Admittedly, there is relatively robust support for closed captioning on the television and in films. Youtube has the auto-generated closed captioning which has become quite accurate (for American accents).
For the sight impaired, video description does exist for most major films and popular TV shows. Even with complete vision I will enable video descriptions on some programs; I am impressed how quickly they can paint a scene to keep up with the pacing of the movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_description [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @02:15PM
I just can't watch anime without subtitles anymore regardless of language. Going.. yeah..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @09:07AM
Okay, fine, we'll change the report display for you too. How do you suggest that this be done?
(Score: 2) by J_Darnley on Monday September 30 2019, @09:08AM
If this case forces the web and Internet in general to go pack to plain text roots I, for one, will welcome his victory. On the other hand: fuck the government for telling my what I can and can't do with my website.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @09:18AM (1 child)
Most of the internet is porn.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday September 30 2019, @09:36AM
I'm really not sure about that these days. An awful lot of it appears to be javascript, images, and videos for advertising related purposes.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Monday September 30 2019, @09:48AM (1 child)
If people just made their websites properly, without all the fluff and pointless garbage this would not be an issue.
(Score: 2) by Chocolate on Tuesday October 01 2019, @02:50AM
Web2.0 denier!
Bit-choco-coin anyone?
(Score: 4, Informative) by opinionated_science on Monday September 30 2019, @10:28AM (2 children)
Accessibility is about access for *everyone*
The fact we need a special word, shows how hostile the world is to the less-able bodied...
One would think Web 3.0 would have this cracked..../s
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Monday September 30 2019, @01:29PM
Get rid of all the crap that is related to ad tracking, text that has been converted to images to avoid scrapers and blockers that work based on text content, etc and the problem goes away.
Low contrast colour schemes don't help either. And teeny-tiny fonts make everyone's eyes bleed. Stop trying to make your site "app-ey". It's primarily about presenting information, not looking cool while being unusable.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @05:53AM
The world is hostile to the less able bodied? Say it isn't so! /s
That's the nature of disability isn't it, it is harder to do things than the able bodied. The built environment and information technology are some of the places where things can be done to make life easier, and are. Sure there is work to be done but it is not that simple as you should not significantly disadvantage one persons access to privilege anothers. See the example about about tactile pavement for sight impaired people being a hazard for those with mobility problems.
Most western countries have significant legislation around accessibility so spare me the oppression narrative.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Monday September 30 2019, @10:35AM (1 child)
The consumer market seems to be actively hostile to blind or vision impaired people. Everything these days HAS to be on a grease screen, I mean touch screen. Simple shit, even like thermostats have to have touch screens, builit-in wifi, and the ability to blare advertisements, but not a single tactile control.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @10:33PM
Some of those are actually better. For example, my thermostat is the best I've ever had for blind people. The first one I had was a round, mercury-globe Honeywell. I never had any idea what temp setting was unless my mother read it for me. Then was a programmable thermostat that required the buttons to be pressed in a certain pattern to change the temp, and I had no way to actually know the temp without having my neighbor read it for me. The next was a sliding bar type with clicks every 2 degrees, but goodness help you if you forget what it is set to or want the current temp when off, and when on, you had to adjust the temp until it clicked on or off at the temp setting.
My current one is a standard touchscreen thermostat with the accessibility features turned on. One tap anywhere on the screen gives it's current status, "Current temp 74, 43% humidity, dehumidifying" Tap on the top corner repeats, double tap gives, "Current temp 74, 43% humidity, outside temp: 86, furnace: 66, AC: 78, away mode off, dehumidifying, fan auto, screen locked." Other corners have different features, including reading the weather, away mode, locking, settings and more. Poking the center allows me to access the mode selection. Anywhere else activates the set point adjustment for either the heating or cooling set-point depending on whether I'm closer to the left or the right. When doing so, it announces each degree, and then repeats the setting when locked in, followed by the current status. Much better than any of the other thermostats I have owned, despite being a touchscreen, and that isn't even counting the voice commands. I could go on, but technology can make accessibility better, but people need to remember that the disabled exist. Computing now is, in many ways, better now than it was then. At least I'm not stuck using CLIs for everything or trying to use a hacked together Lynx and screen reader setup.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Monday September 30 2019, @12:14PM (1 child)
Hpw could it be worth paying lawyers to argue to the supreme court instead of just changing the darn website? Or are they ideologically opposed to having a usable site?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @01:09PM
It looks to me like a clear assertion of dominance on the part of the company to refuse stenuously.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @12:58PM (4 children)
Because of Brendan Eich's "wonderful" contribution, Javascript.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @01:13PM (3 children)
As much as I also dislike pointless JavaScript on websites, there is no technical reason why accessibility could not have been an integral feature of the JavaScript frameworks that we all use these days. my Siri said there are two reasons why there is no accessibility support:
Number one minimum viable product
number two The people writing these frameworks tend to be pretty young and it never crosses their mind that anyone might have less than perfect vision or fantastic fine morning or skills or any of that. Not their problem!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @01:15PM
above: " my Siri" should've been "my theory".
Stupid voice to text.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 30 2019, @01:35PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @04:31PM
"fine morning" -> "fine motor"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday September 30 2019, @01:39PM (2 children)
Overall, there is a huge fetish with horrible graphical presentation. Pages dominated by huge pictures that convey no information. Worse, pictures that may change continuously, distracting you from what little content may actually be present on the page. Slide-in multi-level menus that barely make any sense - not to a person, much less to a screen reader. Dynamic adaptations of the page content by JavaScript. There is literally no way that such websites can ever be accessible to the blind. Heck, sometimes they aren't accessible to sighted people.
I am against a total legal requirement for accessibility, because it is actually a really difficult problem to solve, and also one doesn't want to enable ADA scammers (in the US) to sue everytime someone forgets an "alt" tag. However, there must be some way to create and enforce a minimal level of accessibility. The simplest might be to simply say that a website must be fully functional without JavaScript. Take the dynamic crap out of the equation, and screen readers should be able to handle what's left.
Not to mention: a lot of us would happily block JavaScript anyway, even if we have no vision problems...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @04:34PM
So you would de facto make it illegal to write SPAs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @05:50PM
Simple in principle, not in practice. You're basically outlawing any kind of interactive website. And mandating specific technology in the law is always a bad idea. Definitely throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday September 30 2019, @03:43PM
Also these people have problems:
https://i.imgur.com/YyRnKG9.jpg [imgur.com]
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @04:41PM (4 children)
Good user interface design does not depend SOLELY on color to indicate status.
This is just basic shit everybody ought to know, but a new generation of programmers/wannabe artists is always coming up and they never learned what objectively makes a functional UI. They copy the horrible examples around them, and downhill it goes.
For example, why the hell don't we use the old fashioned red "x", green "checkmark" more often?
You have shape AND color redundantly conveying information and, depending on page design, location of the icon as well.
The UI should be clear as a bell even if viewed in black and white. Color should be an ENHANCEMENT, never a REQUIREMENT.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)
Yup, a simple green X and red check-mark will go a long way to making things better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @08:22AM
One system at $work sometimes uses green check marks to indicate errors (but success at other times, so it isn't consistent..).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @05:15AM
The problem is that might be ambiguous too. Without prior knowledge, which of these are success and which are failure: x or X or ✕ or × or ╳ or ✖ or ✗ or ☓ among others? How can you tell without the color or when the character name is read out loud? Is a MULTIPLICATION ECKS or BALLOT ECKS a good thing? One thing I liked was the thumbs up vs. thumbs down , but then they started skinning them with colors, which can cause problems with screen readers and other accessibility software that don't understand them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @09:01AM
Are you trying to convince Microsoft that SquaredUp needs more than two colors? That green and red alone don't cut it? Good luck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 30 2019, @05:46PM (1 child)
I see three possibilities here:
1) The company wins, blind people are increasingly unable to use the internet. This is bad.
2) Robles wins, and everyone with a WordPress blog or a silly meme website is open to ADA trolls. This is also bad, but it might help getting support for ADA reform.
3) Screen readers up their game so that screen readers can manage even difficult websites. One obvious improvement is relying more on OCR to interpret graphics which have no or bad alt text attributes.
(Score: 2) by progo on Monday September 30 2019, @06:38PM
From my limited experience, screen readers meet abusive web sites more than half-way.
It's unlikely anyone will go on a rampage and sue non-commercial web sites. Normally, they ask commercial sites nicely to "up their game" before they get sued.
I don't see a lot of pressure or legal action outside of the spirit of ADA-like laws. If the pressure is going too far, then maybe we need to repeal ADA. :^)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday October 01 2019, @06:59PM
I see far, far more complaints about nonaccessible websites than I see links to instructions how to make them accessible.