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From a selfish #accessibility viewpoint, things I would like to stop existing:

Discord.
PDFs.
statista.com
Powerpoint/Impress.

What are your "my life would be better if abled users didn't inexplicably choose X" preferences?

Boosts welcome, replies more so.

#a11y #tech

#a11y #Accessibility #tech

Hubert Figuière reshared this.

in reply to modulux

Sven Slootweg
Sven Slootweg
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I have my suspicions as to what the answer is going to be (from what I know about the format), but what problem(s) do PDFs specifically cause for you?
in reply to Sven Slootweg

modulux
modulux
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Lots, but the major ones: recovery of spacing is unreliable (often words appear to be together, or with random spacing in between letters), formatting is not semantic so no navigation by headings and such, mathematical content is unrecoverable as text, footnotes are not easily navigable.
in reply to modulux

Sven Slootweg
Sven Slootweg
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some technical rambling

Sensitive content

in reply to Sven Slootweg

modulux
modulux
• •
some technical rambling

Yeah, I get why people want it--having a static, fixed visual representation of a document is nice--but it can make life annoying for me all too often. The highest accessibility extensions to pdf (PDF/UA or PDF/A) tend to make things a little better, though by no means perfect either.

I think part of the problem is there's nothing that fulfils having visual invariance and being semantic at once. Even something like epub is too complicated because it's html-based and that's too universal, can link to foreign resources and so on.

in reply to modulux

James Scholes
James Scholes
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Wet ink signatures. Overly visual instructions for supposedly simple products and procedures. Screenshots of data/information. Image/video-based identity verification. DRM.
in reply to James Scholes

modulux
modulux
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Good ones all.
in reply to modulux

Wil James
Wil James
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You're looking for a video to learn something. You find one and play it. Bad news! The video has no speech, just either music or silence.
in reply to James Scholes

Andre Louis
Andre Louis
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Touch-screen-only machines in train stations/restaurants. Notice I said touch-screen-only, not just touch-screen period. I get why they exist.

H-CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA that cannot be solved either via audio, or text.
Inaccessible combo and list boxes... What the? Why do they need to exist?

in reply to Andre Louis

modulux
modulux
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Good ones too, the payment and queueing systems with touchscreens are really annoying.
in reply to Andre Louis

Florian
Florian
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the sad thing is honestly that in my experience, inaccessible dropdowns, tables, checkboxes etc. a lot of the time happen "because we couldn't style the default ones enough/easily". Form over function, plain and simple.
in reply to Florian

Mikołaj Hołysz
Mikołaj Hołysz
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Yes this. I've been talking to frontend dev friends about this, and they usually say something along the lines of "I can't style X element of this default control and the design specs say I have to", "If I use the built-in control I have to remove styles before adding my own, and that's notoriously unreliable across browsers", or a combination of the two.
in reply to modulux

Jonathan
Jonathan
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I agree with everything but discord. What do all the people have with discord? Like seriously, its really fine.
in reply to Jonathan

modulux
modulux
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I find it very slow to respond, and hard to navigate. Difficult to find specific messages. Focus often gets lost. And just how incredibly slow it is in combination with a screen reader.
in reply to modulux

Jonathan
Jonathan
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Hmm, are you using the 64bit version? Discord for a long time only had a 32bit installer, it was very weird. But with the new thing, its actually pretty well for me. I never had issues using it with #NVDASR
I get that its anoying on phones, I agree, but on the PC, I'm actually pretty satesfied.
#nvdasr
in reply to Jonathan

modulux
modulux
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Not sure, is there an easy way to find out? I do use it on windows with NVDA. Simple things like moving up or down a message take forever, or going to the next channel with unread messages. Admittedly my computer is old, but this is a chat application. I'm used to IRC clients which have essentially 0 latency to do these things.
in reply to modulux

Jonathan
Jonathan
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If you go to settings, my account, there is a navigation landmark Click to copy version button.
If I press this, I get:
stable 325182 (6e34e46) Host 1.0.9162 x64 (51902) Build Override: N/A Windows 11 64-bit (10.0.22631)
You see, 64bit. I think in the old one it said something else.
I don't know if thats the cause, but you can at least try to check that.
in reply to Jonathan

modulux
modulux
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Seems so: stable 325182 (6e34e46) Host 1.0.9162 x64 (51902) Build Override: N/A Windows 10 64-bit (10.0.19045)
in reply to modulux

Jonathan
Jonathan
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Hmm. I have a friend ( @marc@dragonscave.space ) who had an old asus device on which discord also went completely crazy when he had it opened. Or rather, the van went crazy and the CPU was at it's limits. Maybe its really the laptop, though what you say is true, the client should be able to handle it indeed.
in reply to Jonathan

modulux
modulux
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Yes, I don't know what the issue is, but it is very unresponsive for me. Oh well.
in reply to modulux

Marc
Marc
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Well yeah, check your CPU load. And on laptops, more so on old ones, you'll need to get used to the fact it's not optimal. Maybe you can turn down some visual stuff or what do I know lol. But is it just the performance of the app itself or did you also encounter your computer going crazy like my, fan, Jonathan said before.
On my desktop it really runs fine but guess what, even it's fans go louder down there even though you can't feel the pc slowing it down.
in reply to Marc

modulux
modulux
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It's a desktop, but a very old one. The performance is bad, the disk thrashes a lot, and so on. It's also quite unstable.
in reply to Jonathan

Robert Kingett backup
Robert Kingett backup
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If you are interested, here are my discord thoughts, I legitimately do not understand why other blind people love the app, either on mobile, or, desktop. tweesecake.social/@weirdwriter…
in reply to Robert Kingett backup

Jonathan
Jonathan
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Well, that is not wrong. The iPhone app is not the best, but for me, (visually impaired with 2% sight), it works pretty well, even though I use vo for almost everything in the app as well. Also this conversation was rather about the desktop client, and I must say, that one is really fine. I think its a bit over loaded, like, discord has just so many server settings and permissions and shit, I often like to do simple server moderating stuff on the phone because it just seems more structurated for me, but I guess that's different from user to user. The PC client, besides having some weird performance issues, I personally never experienced myself, is really not bad for most things you want to do if you got used to it.
in reply to Jonathan

modulux
modulux
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I'd say another issue with Discord is that you're forced to use their client. I know this looks like a weird complaint now, but waaaay back in the day communication things like this often had an API or at least didn't make it impossible for 3rd party clients to exist. so with a bit of luck you could find one that suited you better or even make one.
in reply to modulux

Mikołaj Hołysz
Mikołaj Hołysz
• •
Screenshots of text, touch-based UIs on not-so-smart products that don't include a screen reader, like home appliances for example, anything Amazon related but particularly Kindle (Poland does this so much better), videos instead of articles, "modern" terminal user interfaces, anything based on vertical alignment of text, KYC/AML processes, drag and drop (yes you can do it correctly but nobody ever does), CVV codes on cards, scooters on sidewalks, bus/tram stops where more than one vehicle can stop at once, transit providers with non-great APIs, the entire print/sign/scan workflow (I can't wait until AI can do deepfakes indistinguishable from reality and forces governments to switch to a public-key system.

modulux reshared this.

in reply to Mikołaj Hołysz

modulux
modulux
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Good ones. Curious about a few if you care to add: what's the good alternative to Kindle?

Also, for public stuff we pretty much have transitioned to electronic signatures for almost everything at this point, so it is definitely possible.

in reply to modulux

Mikołaj Hołysz
Mikołaj Hołysz
• •

The good alternative to Kindle is the golden trio of pdf/epub/mobi, with irremovable watermaks and visible warnings that "this copy belongs to John Smith (john.smith@example.org) and may not be shared with anybody else".

Bookstores here usually also offer some extra goodies for convenience, like the ability to quickly add an email address to send your books to, to integrate with Kindle or any other brand of reader that supports this, along with a Dropbox and/or Google Drive integration.

in reply to Mikołaj Hołysz

modulux
modulux
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That does sound good. I am very reluctant to pay money for a product with DRM I can't break, because fixing it to a reader I can't be sure will stay accessible makes me nervous. So that would definitely encourage me to spend more money on ebooks.
in reply to Mikołaj Hołysz

Mikołaj Hołysz
Mikołaj Hołysz
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Just to be clear, this is a markedly worse user experience for sighted users, and one that requires far more technical expertise than clicking "buy next book in series" on your Kindle e-reader when you're done with the current one.

Just like all open standards, it's clunky as hell, as most users would much rather think in terms of books and series that just magically appear on their reader, instead of using the abstract, foreign and allien concept of files, files with different formats, a reader having an email address despite not being a person and all that.

in reply to modulux

Sukil Etxenike
Sukil Etxenike
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Ads in mobile phones. Two practical examples: An ad shows up, you have to close the app to dismiss it. Two, you read an article in the web, an ad shows up. And then you hear this. "Close. Close. Close. Close." Insert like a 3 second pause between each "close", bonus points if like me you have no idea how to close that shit.
in reply to Sukil Etxenike

Sukil Etxenike
Sukil Etxenike
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Possible counterpoint: "But on PC..." On PC you can skip the ad. I have no idea about JAWS, but with NVDA you can disable the announcing of dynamic content changes like "This video will end in 20 seconds. This video will end in 19 seconds." etc. I'd like to know if there's a solution for Jaws too, though.
in reply to Sukil Etxenike

modulux
modulux
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I think you can deactivate live regions on iOS as well now? But it's not an OS I am competent with, I only use my phone for calls and texts.
in reply to Sukil Etxenike

Wil James
Wil James
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There is a rotor option in iOS 18. It's toggle regions and announcements. Stick that in your rotor and that pain in the ass should go away.
in reply to modulux

Alex, Nevertheless
Alex, Nevertheless
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Video tutorials.

(I am curious what would replace PDFs in terms of "here is a file format that using a different OS won't completely screw up," while also meeting your needs. Does something like that exist?)

in reply to Alex, Nevertheless

modulux
modulux
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Not sure, that's the thing. I think for most practical purposes epub could do the job, but it doesn't have the assurance that it will look exactly the same--but then I'm a bit dubious how much this exactness is actually required.
in reply to modulux

alcinnz
alcinnz
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My understanding is that there's a degree in contradiction between both of your needs.

The whole point of ePub is that it can be differently whilst remaining legible!

ePub's a nice format, as a sighted person I prefer it...

in reply to alcinnz

modulux
modulux
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The sort of place where people say you need PDFs are legal documents, technical standards, etc, and there's lots of arguments on how you can't allow reflow or any client customisation because changing the format can change the meaning. For example if the document says something on how the third paragraph of page 7 substantiates claim 5, then if anything moves the document no longer says what it is meant to say. But in practice we could solve a lot of this with explicit numbering, internal hyperlinking and so on. So I'm not convinced we need PDFs as much as people think.
in reply to modulux

Zoe
Zoe
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As a computer programmer who's had to deal with both PDFs and Powerpoint my life would also be better without PDFs and Powerpoint so I vote for this one.
in reply to modulux

Alba 🌸
Alba 🌸
• •
I'm surprised I did not see "Flutter apps" being mentioned in the replies, maybe they have improved their accessibility support over the years
in reply to Alba 🌸

modulux
modulux
• •
I think perhaps people don't come across them as often as other things. I can't remember an example myself to test how inaccessible it is.
in reply to modulux

Alba 🌸
Alba 🌸
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right... I'm also realizing, if an app has bad accessibility it would be hard to know it's because it's made in Flutter
in reply to Alba 🌸

modulux
modulux
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Yeah, unless you're a bit of a nerd and investigate the libraries and things you probably won't know what's underneath.
in reply to modulux

Kevin R Jones
Kevin R Jones
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@FreakyFwoof Electron apps. Visual identification as an only option. Interfaces with only images and no text. Drag and drop. Programming languages forcing indentations. Software that force people to use a mouse and offer no keyboard shortcuts. Devices that only communicate by flashing colored lights.
@Andre Louis
in reply to Kevin R Jones

modulux
modulux
• •
Good ones. First one to mention electron apps but I totally agree. Sometimes they can be accessible but they're so unresponsive and unpleasant to navigate. The flashing lights is good too: really great when I have to call the ISP and it's all about "what router lights are on".
in reply to modulux

Alba 🌸
Alba 🌸
• •
why Electron apps and not websites in general, is Electron less accessible than a normal browser?
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Alba 🌸

modulux
modulux
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It varies. A lot of electron stuff has very bad focus handling that makes it hard to use with a screen reader. IAlso electron apps are supposed to substitute native apps, ideally with native widgets with good accessibility, so it's more annoying than websites which inherently need to be websites.
in reply to modulux

Kevin R Jones
Kevin R Jones
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That so many devices have no accessible communication.
That operating systems don’t have any way to turn off ALL animations. I can’t see them, they aren’t cool, they only slow down and confuse screen readers.
in reply to modulux

Jen
Jen
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as a hard of hearing person - videos for everything especially how to guides without a text equivalent.... I mean yes sometimes showing is easier to explain than writing it out especially for multiple steps on computer screens but still... just write it out... please?
in reply to Jen

modulux
modulux
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From the blind perspective it's the same, in the sense that videos showing screenshots, sometimes with just music playing are no use. Text is so much better.
in reply to Jen

Nate
Nate
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Not hard of hearing but Autistic here. Most neurotypical people don't even know that hyperlexia is a thing. I don't communicate well verbally, but my writing comprehension is just fine if. Videos are just as bad as sitting in a lecture hall for me. Either way, I get very little from the time spent. Particularly when put in perspective of the energy expended to glean information from the video vs what I would have expended if it had just been written down.

I had a research/writing class last term where the English department had gone out of their way to make as much video material as possible. One week's resources had two short pages and over a dozen videos. My professor did raise my concerns to the department head but they were pretty much dismissed.

in reply to Nate

modulux
modulux
• •
Very sorry that you got an access need denied, especially when it doesn't seem that burdensome (making video is a lot more expensive and time-consuming than making text).
in reply to modulux

PointlessOne
PointlessOne
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I’d like to know more about issues with PDF. My understanding is that PDF can be accessible. Are there any particular issues with accessible PDFs or is the issue that most PDFs do not follow accessibility guidelines?
in reply to PointlessOne

modulux
modulux
• •
PDF can be accessible but very rarely is. However, even accessible PDF will have some, though not all, of those issues: lack of semantic navigation, bad access to footnotes (because the presentation is meant to be lineal and they're at the bottom of each page interrupting reading flow), no textually recoverable presentation of mathematics. However, good accessible PDFs won't at least have the spacing issues, and may have some amount of useful semantic information.
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