I would never agree with this statement of the author: "You won’t stop until everybody is using your app." Why ? All the apps I ever build (or participate in their development) where targeted to the fit the most, without sacrificing the business requirements or other important/critical aspects of the app. Otherwise will end-up with an unusable product.
I don't know - I'm always amused at how companies will try all sorts of growth hacks to eke out an extra 1% of DAU or whatever, but won't prioritise building products for human beings.
You should see how ADA requirements are practically impossible or completely break design. The high contrast of font to background requirement is so extreme that most major sites and even ADA related sites fail. Things like alt text is so time consuming it would be incredibly expensive to label all the images. Facebook has long resorted to using AI descriptions.
Really it shouldn't be up to the developer it should be up to the disabled person to buy tools. Just like someone may need to buy a wheelchair to move around, they should have to buy a specialty browser that handles their limited visibility needs or brail tool interface.
I guess if you're growing for the sake of growth you would do exactly that: not stop until everybody is using your app, because # of users (or rather, delta-# of users) is the most important metric. I agree it's a terrible metric, but isn't it the only VC-money-fuelled metric that counts in many cases (at least nowadays?)
I do my best to make all of my apps at least vision-impaired accessible.
The last app, I figured a way to make that easier to manage, and reward use by non-disabled folks.
I have a long-press help feature. If you long-press on any element in the UI, up pops a popover, with a header, and body text, pointing at the element. The popover explains that element.
It's fairly easy to have a long-press gesture recognizer applied to the main view, and dynamically figure out which element was hit. I then look for the accessibility items. If they are there, I do the popover.
I use the accessibilityLabel for the header, and the accessibilityHint for the text. It works extremely well, and no one has ever had it pop up when they weren't specifically trying for it.
Nice practical article. Accessibility is really important, but one of my pet peeves is when people call developers lazy for not making apps accessible by default. There really is a lot of concepts to learn, conflicting priorities, and tools to get familiar with, on top of making the business case to do it. Most developers and designers I've worked aren't that familiar with WCAG rules either.
By the way, the blue on yellow, and blue on green buttons won't pass color contrast requirements. Black on yellow will work, and white on blue (for darker blues) will work. Finding a set of branded colors that contrast as needed is tricky too.
Why have we settled upon annotating accessibility options onto a visual-first, generally high-precision/high-touch-density medium? Wouldn't it be better to just have a "low vision" version of the app, a "low touch accuracy" version of the app, etc?
Then you could provide the accessibility-minded users with something customized to their needs, instead of trying to shoehorn accessibility onto a layout that might have no commonality between what "normal" users want and what accessibility-required users want.
I built my app in Flutter without thinking about a11y at all, and had a blind user complain about a feature I updated. She had been using the app for about 6 months and she said it’s one of the most accessible apps she’s used. Flutter pretty much takes care of it all for you and the highly custom feature I built didn’t need much tweaking at all to make it work for her again.
What is the real liability for a scenario like this? Is there any grace period when a new app or startup becomes far more successful far sooner than expected? I imagine A11Y isn't a massive concern when it's not certain an idea will even work; outside of California I can't imagine being legally skewered if, once you attain unexpected success, you devote A11Y resources to address this issue.
I work for an information service that sells subscriptions to academic and other users.
We don't have a legal mandate per se to be accessible but many of our subscribers do have a mandate that services they buy have to be accessible. Many of our customers insist on it because they have a legal mandate to be accessible. The university that we are a part of got sued because it made web sites that were not accessible
and in principle any school could get in trouble for buying products and services that aren't accessible. So it is part of the contracts we sign now, we do accessibility audits regularly to stay ahead of issues, sometimes we have have customers who do their own audits. Thus a11y is a major priority here so I have learned all about ARIA (our app is a great fit) not to mention the real formulas for color spaces, contrast ratios and how to use a screen reader.
You're liable under the ADA everywhere in the US. Florida and New York are the big federal courts where people bring these cases. If it's found that you have created a barrier to accessing services, you can be sued.
The US doesn't really have any regulatory apparatus for disability access - ADA liability is how it gets handled. The legal test is murky, the amount you're liable for is murky, and thats generally considered ok, because it will make you fix your shit (legal term).
> What is the real liability for a scenario like this?
In the EU:
As of 28 June 2025, companies must ensure that the newly marketed products and services covered by the Act are accessible. Member States may decide to make some exceptions. For instance, they can allow more time for the application of the new rules to service providers using self-service terminals. Microenterprises (i.e., a small business with fewer than 10 employees) which provide services also are exempted from the obligations of the Act. Nevertheless, all microenterprises are encouraged to make their products and services accessible to persons with disabilities.
It’s generally less of a legal liability and more of a reputation thing; as you grow you will get more and more users telling you off. See Wordle for an easy example.
Plus, its not that hard to do correctly, so the “we’re a startup on a critical burn rate” stops working as an excuse rather early
You should invest as much into accessibility as you do into scaling.
Meaning: you should think about it early on, and design for the need, but not over invest in it too early.
If you're at the the stage where you don't know if your idea will work, you shouldn't be polishing accessibility, just like you shouldn't be denormalizing your database schema to increase performance.
However, you should be thinking about accessibility, just like you should be thinking about how your database queries will scale if you get increased load.
So for example: if you're making a database of images, why not add a field for alt text from the start and start populating it now? If your app needs drag and drop, why not start sketching out an alternative flow for people who can't drag and drop now?
I follow this as part of my role and the number of lawsuits has been increasing steadily over the years. Last year was 4,600 (for websites/apps) in the US. So might not feel a lot but of course the bigger your app is the bigger the target.
Not a lawyer, but helped addressed these concerns on the dev side at a previous large company.
It's going to vary a lot, but one metric that's used by lawyers in finding companies to sue is whether it impedes another protected action. For example, hiring employees has lots of rules and protections, therefore the website where people can look at and apply for your jobs needs to be accessible, especially if there is no other way to apply.
I've worked for a couple of large corporations who were sued for accessibility issues.
This was about 5-6 years ago though and I was told back then that there was a number of people who are deliberately scouring the internet for websites with accessibility issues so they can sue them for not complying with US accessibility laws. These lawsuits I believe can be fairly costly for large organisations – I know I was given numbers in the millions, but I was on the technical team so I can't say for sure whether that number is accurate.
In one of the cases I was involved with we were given a period of time to take remedial action to make our site accessible otherwise we could face additional fines. I'd assume if you have a reasonable excuse that the penalties and remediation period would be more lenient.
I'll also add I'm from the UK, but our websites served US customers and our lawsuits came from the US. I believe the UK has similar accessibility laws, but I guess we don't have the same culture of suing businesses.
For the last 12 years of his life, my father was in an electric wheelchair as a result of a stroke. Prior to that, I was vaguely aware of ADA compliance - basically because there were posted signs everywhere about parking spaces and restroom stalls.
It was only after seeing the ease with which he could navigate the world in spite of his chair that I appreciated how important that law was, because I also saw so many things that he wasn't able to do even though there was a law. Our entire world is built around and for people who see, hear, speak, walk, climb, and crawl.
As developers, I would say we're second only (maybe) to government in the ability to make the world accessible. I'm as guilty as anybody at this. Please make the effort to make your work as accessible as possible to everyone.
I had a similar experience but with my partner. Wrote a longer rant[0].
It's quite hard to notice a lot of these things before you actually have to deal with them. I knew ramps were needed and automatic doors, but the shock was more about little things. But, a big thing I've noticed is that like 90% of things that would help us would make lives easier for normal people too. Which this was a big thing that opened my mind of how to address a lot of accessibility, is just think more deeply. If it affects a wheelchair it also affects a stroller, your wheeled baggage, things being dropped between cracks/small gaps, being able to clean between gaps (and subsequently the mold, water damage, grime, etc that makes things more costly in the long run!), your robot delivery drone, whatever. Ironically making the world more accessible for wheel-chaired people makes the world easier to robotize, which in turn can then also help disabled people. But the lesson is to think deep, because there are so many parallels. So if you hit upon one, you benefit the others. So you don't need to sit around thinking of every possible disability to make things accessible, which is a big blessing in itself. But if you think with care you will make the world much more accessible. No one expects to be perfectly accessible to everyone and disabled people know the world isn't going to bend to them, but that also doesn't mean we shouldn't try and care for our friends and family (other humans). But since it can help, just remember that a lot of things that help them will also help you.
Tangentially related, but it's a bit interesting to see how many men get "radicalized" after being on paternity leave and pushing a stroller around. I'm volunteering on a board for an organization that (among other things) works for more accessible streets (more from an angle of less car dependence though), and we get lots of new members with this revelation. Suddenly they hate getting from point A to B; "It's just a short distance, why is everything making it so hard? Why are there curbs everywhere? Why isn't it wide enough for my stroller to pass? Why are there no big toilets where I can bring the kid with me? Why do I have to go a long way extra for an elevator?".
Really similar to backups in this regard. People don't appreciate it, until they need it. Then it goes from "I don't care, leave me alone, inconvenience" to "life-saving essential thing, why doesn't everyone care about this all the time".
> Our entire world is built around and for people who see, hear, speak, walk, climb, and crawl.
As a parent, I would disagree with the world is built for those that crawl. New parents are told/suggested to crawl around their house just to get a closer eye-level exprience of what their toddler will have.
I run into this issue a fair bit because I enable 'larger text' for the display zoom option on my iPhone. I do this because I find it is just more comfortable to do things on the screen with one hand when there are larger hit boxes.
I think 'accessibility' can be reframed as being more generally about flexible configuration and control for everyone to benefit from.
For such personal devices it's not just about about disability, it's about the freedom I want as a user to mold an interface to actually fit me and my usage style moment to moment. Sometimes I want a screen read to me or just a section of it. I'm not visually impaired, I just might not want to look at the screen.
The very community who needs this, is inclined to ask first sue second.
The ADA exists and is a powerful law. If you are willing to put in the work, generally you're going to get a pass.
I wrote a bunch of accessibility guides (with a lawyer looking over my shoulder) around 2000 for a F500. I have since worked with blind users to add accessibility to apps. If someone is asking, and you can help them do it. You will have a massive advocate for what ever it is your doing!
Yeah for a decent period of time, the accessibility of Dropbox's desktop app was entirely dependent on one passionate blind forum user who called us out (politely!) every time we messed something up. It was a great, productive relationship that led to us continuing to release test builds on the forums for longer than we would otherwise have done so.
Indeed. You can literally spend as little effort as physically possible working on accessibility, and you will still be doing better than way too many businesses, and people with disabilities will still give you props for your literal minimal compliance.
Your App is successful because you didn't spend time on useless things like a11y, i18n during the p-m-f stage. If you look at every successful product in history, they didn't focus on a11y or i18n right from the bat.
Now, that it is successful, you can think about it and spend resources.
Just today, I was making a product landing page and wanted it to be accessible. Since we have Instagram, YouTube, and GitHub, I wanted to get the icons from those sources. I looked at how to ensure that with SVG and found this SO [1].
While YouTube does not supply SVGs, the SVGs from Instagram [2] and GitHub [3] did not include any a11y metadata. I was really surprised by this, given the massive user bases thereof, both consumer and developer. Maybe that's because it's not universal what should be there?
So I had to insert it myself. I was scared to make a repo sharing these changes, but I will drop the GitHub one here:
In `<svg>` element I added:
role="img"
aria-label="[title + description]"
Nested inside I put:
<title>GitHub Octocat Logo</title>
<desc>An Octocat shadow in front of a white circle</desc>
You don't really need to do that. The point of putting alt text on images is to users who use screen readers can still understand your website. Tabbing through in a screen reader hearing detailed descriptions of each social logo is probably a poor user experience.
Probably just "Github logo" or even "Github" would do just as well. If the image/logo is purely presentational (that is - if you remove the image do you remove information from the site?), just blank it out with an empty string.
Fun fact: it's far more than 16% because people tend to forget the two super most obvious accessibility requirements: being able to read text, and being able to interact with elements. About half of the planet has a visual disability that's bad enough to require a corrective medical device, and over 10% of the planet is just plain old. Tiny UI elements and small text are easily overlooked, huge problems.
>16% of people have some kind of accessibility requirement
16% is 4 in 25 people, also no guarantee you'll be able to accommodate their specific accessibility requirement, depending on the app, and depending on the requirement.
That's not to say the app shouldn't be accessible, more that, you should think about when you spend the money to implement things like this, and how that money may best be spent to accommodate the highest number of people. Figure out who those people are, then figure out what your revenue growth would be if you captured those people, then compare those numbers to how much you'll have to spend to accommodate their needs. That's no different than any feature upgrade really.
Where you'll likely arrive at is the same place many apps have, unfortunately, arrived at, which is to probably just get text scaling quasi working and leave it at that because anything more is throwing cash into a black hole.
this is why i stick to gtk despite some very attractive looking new gui toolkits - gtk has solved its accessibility issues already, and the new toolkits mostly have it on the todo list.
This post reminded me of a video I found really cool from a couple years back where Masahiro Sakurai(creator of Kirby, Super Smash Bros) talked about the importance of accessibility options and how Japanese developers - at the time, were lagging behind their western counterparts. He shows examples from and references Sony/Naughty Dog's 'The Last of Us'.
I'm not sure if this is something that Sakurai influenced or not, though I have noticed larger Japanese AAA game studios adding more and more features in terms of accessibility in the last couple years from studios such as Ryu Go Gotoko(Yakuza series), Capcom(Resident Evil, Street Fighter), and FromSoft(Dark Souls, Elden Ring)
For software accessibility, I get the importance, but I personally have no idea where to start. Cross-platform windowing, graphics, fonts, and audio are already insanely difficult. How does one do cross-platform accessibility?
I think A11Y has been approached incorrectly. A11Y should be an additional standardized data feed that A11Y devices have to consume. Right now the requirements while helpful to everyone, also restrict the full potential of CSS/JS/the browser. With highly complex UIs it becomes almost impossible to be compliant. Right now any A11Y device has unique control over applications. In theory it seems like one could introduce a new product to market, claim a website does not support it, and then file a suit.
I was kinda shocked at how bad the UI framework broke down when the text size increased. I always thought iOS widgets seduced developers at the expense of users but here is the proof.
I like that this article was about solving the problem and not lecturing the person that they should have done it all up front before it was ever successful.
[+] [-] huqedato|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madeofpalk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakey_bakey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolliquidcode|2 years ago|reply
Really it shouldn't be up to the developer it should be up to the disabled person to buy tools. Just like someone may need to buy a wheelchair to move around, they should have to buy a specialty browser that handles their limited visibility needs or brail tool interface.
[+] [-] zymhan|2 years ago|reply
Surely you could've shared your take on the actual substance of the post?
[+] [-] curtisblaine|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alsetmusic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyst|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|2 years ago|reply
The last app, I figured a way to make that easier to manage, and reward use by non-disabled folks.
I have a long-press help feature. If you long-press on any element in the UI, up pops a popover, with a header, and body text, pointing at the element. The popover explains that element.
It's fairly easy to have a long-press gesture recognizer applied to the main view, and dynamically figure out which element was hit. I then look for the accessibility items. If they are there, I do the popover.
I use the accessibilityLabel for the header, and the accessibilityHint for the text. It works extremely well, and no one has ever had it pop up when they weren't specifically trying for it.
[+] [-] jakey_bakey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanwilson|2 years ago|reply
By the way, the blue on yellow, and blue on green buttons won't pass color contrast requirements. Black on yellow will work, and white on blue (for darker blues) will work. Finding a set of branded colors that contrast as needed is tricky too.
[+] [-] IncreasePosts|2 years ago|reply
Then you could provide the accessibility-minded users with something customized to their needs, instead of trying to shoehorn accessibility onto a layout that might have no commonality between what "normal" users want and what accessibility-required users want.
[+] [-] darajava|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freedomben|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikece|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|2 years ago|reply
We don't have a legal mandate per se to be accessible but many of our subscribers do have a mandate that services they buy have to be accessible. Many of our customers insist on it because they have a legal mandate to be accessible. The university that we are a part of got sued because it made web sites that were not accessible
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/10/fifty-college...
and in principle any school could get in trouble for buying products and services that aren't accessible. So it is part of the contracts we sign now, we do accessibility audits regularly to stay ahead of issues, sometimes we have have customers who do their own audits. Thus a11y is a major priority here so I have learned all about ARIA (our app is a great fit) not to mention the real formulas for color spaces, contrast ratios and how to use a screen reader.
[+] [-] awkward|2 years ago|reply
The US doesn't really have any regulatory apparatus for disability access - ADA liability is how it gets handled. The legal test is murky, the amount you're liable for is murky, and thats generally considered ok, because it will make you fix your shit (legal term).
[+] [-] ReleaseCandidat|2 years ago|reply
In the EU:
https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1202&intPageId=55...[+] [-] jakey_bakey|2 years ago|reply
Plus, its not that hard to do correctly, so the “we’re a startup on a critical burn rate” stops working as an excuse rather early
[+] [-] dmazzoni|2 years ago|reply
Meaning: you should think about it early on, and design for the need, but not over invest in it too early.
If you're at the the stage where you don't know if your idea will work, you shouldn't be polishing accessibility, just like you shouldn't be denormalizing your database schema to increase performance.
However, you should be thinking about accessibility, just like you should be thinking about how your database queries will scale if you get increased load.
So for example: if you're making a database of images, why not add a field for alt text from the start and start populating it now? If your app needs drag and drop, why not start sketching out an alternative flow for people who can't drag and drop now?
[+] [-] jonshariat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theLiminator|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strictnein|2 years ago|reply
It's going to vary a lot, but one metric that's used by lawyers in finding companies to sue is whether it impedes another protected action. For example, hiring employees has lots of rules and protections, therefore the website where people can look at and apply for your jobs needs to be accessible, especially if there is no other way to apply.
[+] [-] kypro|2 years ago|reply
This was about 5-6 years ago though and I was told back then that there was a number of people who are deliberately scouring the internet for websites with accessibility issues so they can sue them for not complying with US accessibility laws. These lawsuits I believe can be fairly costly for large organisations – I know I was given numbers in the millions, but I was on the technical team so I can't say for sure whether that number is accurate.
In one of the cases I was involved with we were given a period of time to take remedial action to make our site accessible otherwise we could face additional fines. I'd assume if you have a reasonable excuse that the penalties and remediation period would be more lenient.
I'll also add I'm from the UK, but our websites served US customers and our lawsuits came from the US. I believe the UK has similar accessibility laws, but I guess we don't have the same culture of suing businesses.
[+] [-] maxloh|2 years ago|reply
Not a friend of accessibility though. It requires so much work to satisfy a small base of users.
[+] [-] sircastor|2 years ago|reply
It was only after seeing the ease with which he could navigate the world in spite of his chair that I appreciated how important that law was, because I also saw so many things that he wasn't able to do even though there was a law. Our entire world is built around and for people who see, hear, speak, walk, climb, and crawl.
As developers, I would say we're second only (maybe) to government in the ability to make the world accessible. I'm as guilty as anybody at this. Please make the effort to make your work as accessible as possible to everyone.
[+] [-] godelski|2 years ago|reply
It's quite hard to notice a lot of these things before you actually have to deal with them. I knew ramps were needed and automatic doors, but the shock was more about little things. But, a big thing I've noticed is that like 90% of things that would help us would make lives easier for normal people too. Which this was a big thing that opened my mind of how to address a lot of accessibility, is just think more deeply. If it affects a wheelchair it also affects a stroller, your wheeled baggage, things being dropped between cracks/small gaps, being able to clean between gaps (and subsequently the mold, water damage, grime, etc that makes things more costly in the long run!), your robot delivery drone, whatever. Ironically making the world more accessible for wheel-chaired people makes the world easier to robotize, which in turn can then also help disabled people. But the lesson is to think deep, because there are so many parallels. So if you hit upon one, you benefit the others. So you don't need to sit around thinking of every possible disability to make things accessible, which is a big blessing in itself. But if you think with care you will make the world much more accessible. No one expects to be perfectly accessible to everyone and disabled people know the world isn't going to bend to them, but that also doesn't mean we shouldn't try and care for our friends and family (other humans). But since it can help, just remember that a lot of things that help them will also help you.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39748213
[+] [-] matsemann|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] npteljes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|2 years ago|reply
As a parent, I would disagree with the world is built for those that crawl. New parents are told/suggested to crawl around their house just to get a closer eye-level exprience of what their toddler will have.
[+] [-] squigz|1 year ago|reply
This isn't something I've really considered, but it's both very true and very important. Thank you
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rifty|2 years ago|reply
I think 'accessibility' can be reframed as being more generally about flexible configuration and control for everyone to benefit from.
For such personal devices it's not just about about disability, it's about the freedom I want as a user to mold an interface to actually fit me and my usage style moment to moment. Sometimes I want a screen read to me or just a section of it. I'm not visually impaired, I just might not want to look at the screen.
[+] [-] zer00eyz|2 years ago|reply
The ADA exists and is a powerful law. If you are willing to put in the work, generally you're going to get a pass.
I wrote a bunch of accessibility guides (with a lawyer looking over my shoulder) around 2000 for a F500. I have since worked with blind users to add accessibility to apps. If someone is asking, and you can help them do it. You will have a massive advocate for what ever it is your doing!
[+] [-] aftbit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrguyorama|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zooq_ai|2 years ago|reply
Now, that it is successful, you can think about it and spend resources.
[+] [-] neomantra|2 years ago|reply
While YouTube does not supply SVGs, the SVGs from Instagram [2] and GitHub [3] did not include any a11y metadata. I was really surprised by this, given the massive user bases thereof, both consumer and developer. Maybe that's because it's not universal what should be there?
So I had to insert it myself. I was scared to make a repo sharing these changes, but I will drop the GitHub one here:
In `<svg>` element I added:
Nested inside I put: [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4697100/accessibility-re...[2] https://about.meta.com/brand/resources/instagram/instagram-b...
[3] https://github.com/logos
[+] [-] madeofpalk|2 years ago|reply
Probably just "Github logo" or even "Github" would do just as well. If the image/logo is purely presentational (that is - if you remove the image do you remove information from the site?), just blank it out with an empty string.
[+] [-] TheRealPomax|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtriangle|2 years ago|reply
>16% of people have some kind of accessibility requirement
16% is 4 in 25 people, also no guarantee you'll be able to accommodate their specific accessibility requirement, depending on the app, and depending on the requirement.
That's not to say the app shouldn't be accessible, more that, you should think about when you spend the money to implement things like this, and how that money may best be spent to accommodate the highest number of people. Figure out who those people are, then figure out what your revenue growth would be if you captured those people, then compare those numbers to how much you'll have to spend to accommodate their needs. That's no different than any feature upgrade really.
Where you'll likely arrive at is the same place many apps have, unfortunately, arrived at, which is to probably just get text scaling quasi working and leave it at that because anything more is throwing cash into a black hole.
[+] [-] zem|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenneth|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mablopoule|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] friedtofu|2 years ago|reply
This post reminded me of a video I found really cool from a couple years back where Masahiro Sakurai(creator of Kirby, Super Smash Bros) talked about the importance of accessibility options and how Japanese developers - at the time, were lagging behind their western counterparts. He shows examples from and references Sony/Naughty Dog's 'The Last of Us'.
I'm not sure if this is something that Sakurai influenced or not, though I have noticed larger Japanese AAA game studios adding more and more features in terms of accessibility in the last couple years from studios such as Ryu Go Gotoko(Yakuza series), Capcom(Resident Evil, Street Fighter), and FromSoft(Dark Souls, Elden Ring)
[+] [-] bmitc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmazzoni|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cogn1zance|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lamontcg|2 years ago|reply