As a side note, designing well for disabilities often translates to better design as well. Those alternate text labels and better layout for screen readers can make your site easier for the googlebot to read. You can find navigation and flow issues. Buttons that are hard to click are harder for everyone to click, even if some can manage. Or those buttons are really hard for everyone on tablets to hit because they are too small.
This is a great, unfortunately under-appreciated point. In many ways it's similar to good responsive design – if you can't maintain the pretense that you can cram every control onto a screen, you're forced to actually think about what is most important to the person using your app.
(One bit of serendipity: sites which were designed to be accessible were ahead of the curve for touchscreens, too. Designers could fool themselves into thinking a 6px button was a good idea when they have a high-precision mouse but the first iPad made everyone appreciate how bad that assumption is)
This happens in the real world too, aka the sidewalk effect. The cutouts in the sidewalk for wheelchairs are now used by everyone else too for their: strollers, bikes, shopping carts, and anyone else who doesn't want to raise their foot an extra couple of inches.
There was a great TED talk about how cities which are well designed for the disabled (in the case of this talk, the blind) are well designed for all. http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_downey_design_with_the_blind_... Definitely a great concept to keep in mind.
I have seen thousands of wheelchair users. I have never seen a car that i) would have been stopped by a kerb and ii) would not have been stopped by a ramp.
Your point illustrates the subject line nicely. Very many people have a disability, yet you're suggesting very rare benefits of keeping kerbs that hamper people with disabilities.
Bear in mind that, if that really happens, it is a much, much less frequent occurrence than people being aided by the dropped kerbs and not stumbling/falling with pushchairs, wheelchairs or unsteady feet when mounting full height curbs . The proper fix for that also isn't making kerbs full height again.
In most cases you're more likely to be hit by a car if you're riding on the sidewalk. Last numbers I suggest that your risk of being killed by a car is about twice as high when you're on the sidewalk.
The reason is simple: Bikes move quickly, and bikes on the sidewalk are much harder for motorists to see than bikes on the street. That makes it extremely difficult - sometimes impossible - for drivers to see or anticipate when a bike is about to cross a street, alley, or driveway. Meanwhile, cyclists are relatively unaware of their surroundings compared to pedestrians, for the same reason that motorists are: They're moving faster. These two factors can easily combine to create a sudden use-of-space conflict that cyclists never win.
You're less visible on the sidewalk than in a lane, and you pose a threat to others. I'd almost go so far as to say, "Cycle where you're supposed to, or don't cycle." Moving in unexpected ways in unexpected places is what leads to collisions.
While your factual statements are true, and cyclists on sidewalks can certainly be a menace, I don't think it's really tenable to argue that cyclists should always be textbook road users unless you also ensure that everyone driving larger and motorised vehicles also plays by the rules.
I live in a city known for having many cyclists, and there are always tensions between the local cycling population and the authorities about the poor level of law enforcement against dangerous drivers. Of course, there is also a poor level of law enforcement against cyclists doing dumb and illegal things. The difference is that when something goes wrong, it's usually the cyclist who ends up injured or dead, not the motorist.
So while in an ideal world we'd all get along nicely and play by the rules, I don't tend to get angry at cyclists whose choices are illegal but obviously safer (as in, I've read the actual research and current law and/or public policy clearly doesn't promote the safest option, not just doing something that intuitively feels safer but maybe isn't really).
"The difference is that when something goes wrong, it's usually the cyclist who ends up injured or dead, not the motorist."
In the case of riding on sidewalks where it is inappropriate, it's also frequently a pedestrian.
"I don't tend to get angry at cyclists whose choices are illegal but obviously safer (as in, I've read the actual research and current law and/or public policy clearly doesn't promote the safest option, not just doing something that intuitively feels safer but maybe isn't really)."
In those cases, I agree that the cyclist should do what's safest (presuming it's safe enough - on balance - for everyone involved). So should drivers of vehicles, for that matter. My understanding is that taking the lane, where traffic is moving at a speed the cyclist can keep up with, is the best way of keeping everyone safe (I wouldn't be recommending it otherwise). You are right where everyone who might hit you can best see you. I say this as someone who cycles in a big city fairly regularly, with a spouse who bikes in a big city even more regularly, in the wake of biking safety classes. I'm not just an annoyed driver/pedestrian/whatever trying to keep the cyclist down.
Most big cities to me seem a lot safer for bicyclists than a lot of smaller cities and communities. The traffic is often slower, and accustomed to watching out for bicycles and pedestrians. In less populated areas, particularly those that have clearly provided no thought for the safety of anyone not in an automobile, or the occasional rare pedestrian, drivers can be very careless and accidentally or even intentionally run down a bicyclist at lethal speed. Nighttime is especially dangerous, not least for greatly reduced visibility, but also many more drunk drivers on the road.
A bicyclists safety is much more threatened by a multi-thousand pound vehicle traveling at 40 or more mph with a distracted driver on a seemingly deserted stretch of road, then a pedestrians is by a 150-200 lb body traveling at around 10-15 mph. The reaction time is also much greater, allowing more opportunity to prevent a collision on the part of the oncoming vehicle.
If bicycles are rare, you are still much more likely to be seen and avoided if you are where cars expect a car to be, then if you are where cars expect nothing to be.
Of course, there are still situations where riding in the street - either in a bike lane or taking the lane - is dangerous or otherwise impractical; the question is whether riding on the sidewalk is an improvement, or whether you should be forgoing cycling (perhaps walking your bike).
A lot of skaters and kids on scooters and have become injured thanks to the those rubber stoppers. You can't rely on them if you're disabled, because they're not on every corner. I've also read that it's cheaper to give disabled people a full time minder than to run these programmes.
Solutions that start with 'let's change the world' never, ever work. Let's fix screenreaders. And help the blind by analysing what;'s in front of them, rather than changing it.
"Solutions that start with 'let's change the world' never, ever work. Let's fix screenreaders. And help the blind by analysing what;'s in front of them, rather than changing it."
It's not screenreaders that are the problem, its the quality of the content (in terms of structure, perceivability, operability, usability and robustness). In short, GIGO. The garbage input is where the fix is needed, not the tool that's attempting to treat it as actual quality.
The "fix the screen readers" argument is a terribly terribly deep rabbit hole, requiring pretty much world-changing technologies: solving artificial intelligence, solving computer vision, teaching computers empathy, emotion, spatial relativity and context, cultural awareness, interpretation of imagery, spot and be able to translate visual cues... so many many deeply technical problems to solve.
In the choice between "fixing screenreaders" and web developers doing their jobs properly, the latter is a low hanging fruit in comparison. I assume teaching web developers basic skills is easier than teaching computers how to think and perceive (though, I recognise some people are beyond help). It takes a year to teach a web developer professional web development, it's been 60-odd years and they haven't seriously cracked artificial intelligence yet.
Responding to your 3rd paragraph. I think you are too pessimistic. Solving the general case probably is that hard.
But working "well enough", "most of the time" probably isn't. I'd think a clever selection of hacks, combined with a knowledge of the most common patterns in which websites are designed go a very long way.
Afaik googlebot does things like this already. It detects hidden elements to prevent blackhat seo for instance.
There was a period not too long ago where people were encouraged to build web apps without any behavior because screenreaders couldn't run JavaScript.
Now nearly all screenreaders can run JavaScript. The thousands of hours spent, for a 0.5% (grossly overestimating) solution, are completely and utterly wasted.
What specifically else is wrong? What wouldn't be solved better be actually fixing what screenreaders can't see, rather than trying to fix All Websites Ever Made?
"Now nearly all screenreaders can run JavaScript."
Saying all screen readers can run JavaScript is like saying all graphics cards can run JavaScript. Screenreaders don't run JavaScript. Screenreaders are not web browsers. A Screenreader is an audio interface on top of an operating system. It's the web browser that runs JavaScript, not the screenreader.
I know what you are attempting to convey, despite the factual incorrectness, and the way in which you describe it. But these are tougher problems to solve in a generic way - it requires expertise on the subject matter under discussion.
I took a sentence of words at their face value, recognised the incorrectness of your statement. Applied a context of accessibility to the statement, and discovered what your intended message was (which was quite different to the statement you used).
Human beings do this all the time. A computer would interpret your statement and say it is false. A human can divine the essence of the message without being blocked by an obviously false statement, a human can look past that and assess the statement in context.
I realise, as a human, your original statement is either intellectually lazy, or misinformed (perhaps you meant to say speech browser?). You either know how screen readers work and worded the statement badly. Or you have no idea how screen readers work, and don't actually realise your statement is factually incorrect.
So I can perceive the content of your statement: Screenreaders have the ability to deal with a dynamically updating DOM. That is a step forward, but minuscule in overcoming the typical accessibility problems present for screenreader users on the web.
"What specifically else is wrong?"
"What wouldn't be solved better be actually fixing what screenreaders can't see"
Your question is misleading. It assumes or implies that all serious accessibility issues can be fixed/addressed by a screenreader. Yes, it would be fantastic when every accessibility problem is thoroughly alleviated by a screenreader. But with today's technology it can't, not even in another 10 years. Many accessibility issues have to do with content gleaned indirectly or implied. It's a human trait of communication.
It's the difference between:
* "A red triangle"
* "Danger"
* "This side is up"
* "Go this way"
* "North"
The use of images is a serious accessibility barrier for blind people. It is not sufficient (or perhaps misleading) to just describe the image in isolation. An image conveys more information than the objects/concepts in the image. The meaningful content of an image can change as the context in which the image is used changes.
Perceiving contextually relevant content from an image - that is something blind people can't do because they are blind. It is also something that's awfully tough for a computer to do reliably. And it's something that a web developer can do in five minutes by authoring an appropriate text equivalent (in an alt attribute of an image).
The big accessibility issues aren't simple "let's parse the HTML, CSS and JavaScript", they come down to using context, visual cues, audio cues, spatial cues, implied meanings, intonation, cultural identification, localisation normalisation - a wide variety of human-based factors to extract the necessary contextual meaning.
Being able to extract the appropriate text-equivalents for an image is something that's trivial for a content writer to do - as the content creator. And exceedingly tough to do without a visual acuity, a visual acuity that computers are far from achieving.
And that's just one single accessibility issue: text-equivalents for images. If you fix that, you'll have the appreciation of millions of people instantly, a substantially accessibility barrier will disappear overnight. I strongly encourage you, if you think this is an easily solvable problem, to just solve it, or help the experts solve it. Seriously. Please.
Concrete molds for curbs are built in-situ to deal with the situation of that particular curb, and the rubber bits are at most $200, so the cost really is fairly negligible.
I can't imagine what "these programmes" you're referring to could be that could possibly be cheaper than providing full-time personal assistants to every visually impaired person in your area. The statement sounds pretty unlikely, and really demands a very reliable source, but you've provided none for support.
Beyond that though, even if this were true, the added expense alone is not enough to justify treating people with disabilities as second-class citizens, who have to be "minded" rather than allowed to freely navigate their own communities, "because it's a bit cheaper that way!"
"the added expense alone is not enough to justify treating people with disabilities as second-class citizens, who have to be "minded" rather than allowed to freely navigate their own communities, "because it's a bit cheaper that way!""
> I can't imagine what "these programmes" you're referring to could be that could possibly be cheaper than providing full-time personal assistants to every visually impaired person in your area.
Jackhammering, buying tactile surfaces, installing tactile surfaces, having a safety inspector, stopping traffic. I read this from a source, but it's my wedding anniversary and I'd rather not go into too much effort finding it right now.
For your second comment: having full time assistants is a first class experience and saves money: having inconsistent tactile surfaces is a second class experience and does not.
You are advocating for disabled people to have a second class experience, which is shameful.
This is such an important point for non-tech or non-design folks to understand. Accessible content-focused design is easy to use. It's also easy to code and easy to for search engines to crawl, making it easy to promote and share.
