Another blind user here. Indeed, modern web technologies and developers are killing my productivity. At first, it started to become increasingly hard to read something with a text browser. For at least half a year, no github wiki rendered in lynx at all. I am not even sure if that is fixed now. So over time, I realized I need a modern browser. These days, I have a dedicated Windows machine for doing things on the web. But it doesnt really help a lot, because even with a modern screen reader and browser, more and more sites are practically unusable.
The more I think of it, the more I realize that Accessibility was always just an accidental byproduct. During the time when graphical displays were not widespread yet, even non-blind people had to deal with text interfaces. So there were many around.
For instance, around 2000 I was reading guitar tablature with my braille display. That worked just fine. These days, if I go and hunt for tablature on the web, all I find are inaccessible graphical things. The only chance I have to find accessible tablature is to go and find a newgroup archive somewhere. This underlines my point, accessibility for the blind is something from the past.
These days, nobody cares about us anymore.
> This underlines my point, accessibility for the blind is something from the past. These days, nobody cares about us anymore.
I care. And I'm trying to do something about it - making HTML5 <canvas> elements more accessible to people such as yourself[1].
The key barrier I'm facing is getting people to take my efforts seriously. In particular, as a person who does not require (or prefer) assistive technologies to access the web, I have been making a lot of assumptions about what needs to be done to make canvas elements more accessible to end users. However I expect some of these assumptions are wrong. Or right - but implemented in a way that is not best practice or even very helpful.
What I need is feedback.
My latest attempt to get feedback was an email to the w3c-wai-ig mailing list[2]. I got one response back (by direct email) which led to a suggested improvement which I've ticketed up for action[3]. Any feedback that I can get from end users is not only welcome, it's essential!
I don't expect my canvas library to take over the world; I do hope that it can act as an example to other, more popular canvas libraries to prove that canvas elements can be made accessible: there's no excuse not to make them accessible.
I feel for you and am very sorry that you have to deal with it.
In my experience as a web dev it's simply that the "market" of blind people is too small for many companies to justify the expenses. I work in a B2B shop which sells a fairly expensive product so our potential visitor base is maybe in the low 1000s of people.
I'm certain there are at least some who are visually impaired and are unable to use our latest online offerings. However, comparing the ROI of fixing that versus the ROI of implementing a new feature that helps ~99% of our customers lead to only one conclusion.
It is my believe that the only route too improve the situation is through regulation. It worked for making public buildings more accessible in many places on this planet.
Threaten noncomplient entities with big fines and see the market adjust.
I am of the opinion that the problem start with the ROI argument. Apple has managed to do the right thing and deliberately ignore ROI when it comes to accessibility. Why can they do the right thing, and the rest of the world can not be arsed to work for the good of the society?
The more I think of it, the more I realize that Accessibility was always just an accidental byproduct. During the time when graphical displays were not widespread yet, even non-blind people had to deal with text interfaces. So there were many around. For instance, around 2000 I was reading guitar tablature with my braille display. That worked just fine. These days, if I go and hunt for tablature on the web, all I find are inaccessible graphical things. The only chance I have to find accessible tablature is to go and find a newgroup archive somewhere. This underlines my point, accessibility for the blind is something from the past. These days, nobody cares about us anymore.