I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline.
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I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline. Operating systems, browsers, messaging apps, email clients, even command line tools.
These things are not being replaced with more #accessible alternatives, but nor does the investment exist to stop the rot within the current options.
This in itself is concerning, particularly as it mirrors tech trends more broadly. But what I worry about quite a bit is what it does for user expectations.
What happens when generations of people grow up with inefficient keyboard access models, faux desktop apps, and a thousand tiny papercuts here and there? When the new baseline is worse than it was before, it takes that bit more effort to imagine and advocate for best rather than just better.
@jscholes @menelion This is probably one of the reasons I've seen many young blind adults not even want to touch a computer, and do everything from their phones. Because if worst comes to worst, they can use VO screen recognition, or tap around, or sighted help, and sighted people *know* phones. It's really sad, because now they are locked in. They don't *want* to make new or different tech because their phones, iPhones, obviously don't allow app creation on the phone, and then running that app and such. It could be better on Android with Termux, but blind people are comfortably numb to Android, because it's different and open, and what if they break something or what if it's not accessible enough for them, all that. So Apple it is. I hope they know just how much blind society relies on them.
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@jscholes @menelion This is probably one of the reasons I've seen many young blind adults not even want to touch a computer, and do everything from their phones. Because if worst comes to worst, they can use VO screen recognition, or tap around, or sighted help, and sighted people *know* phones. It's really sad, because now they are locked in. They don't *want* to make new or different tech because their phones, iPhones, obviously don't allow app creation on the phone, and then running that app and such. It could be better on Android with Termux, but blind people are comfortably numb to Android, because it's different and open, and what if they break something or what if it's not accessible enough for them, all that. So Apple it is. I hope they know just how much blind society relies on them.
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@menelion I can kind of see it. Tools like screen recognition on iOS and VOCR on the Mac, and being able to explore things that might not be in the focus order, can be powerful tools.
That said: I still find that iOS and Android do a relatively poor job of handing control over to the user to find/operate things that are inaccessible. Object nav in NVDA and browser developer tools are more powerful than screen recognition or touch exploration, but understandably perceived as harder to use. @pixelate
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I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline. Operating systems, browsers, messaging apps, email clients, even command line tools.
These things are not being replaced with more #accessible alternatives, but nor does the investment exist to stop the rot within the current options.
This in itself is concerning, particularly as it mirrors tech trends more broadly. But what I worry about quite a bit is what it does for user expectations.
What happens when generations of people grow up with inefficient keyboard access models, faux desktop apps, and a thousand tiny papercuts here and there? When the new baseline is worse than it was before, it takes that bit more effort to imagine and advocate for best rather than just better.
@ZBennoui @jscholes I'm with you on this 100%. Problem is that combined with the false sense of software scarcity (as I boosted a post on this yesterday) and AI coding means the quality will not go up, but go down. Sure, coders can imagine and build out a million things, but attention to detail will be lacking, and it's possible that newer frameworks just don't implement accessibility APIs well or at all because an AI forgot. That pain and bottleneck will be real, and relying on AI alone to get things done is great that it exists but never gets you a consistent metric for measuring because it will go through the flow differently each time. All this to say, I don't see an easy way out of what we've dug ourselves into, well, the industry has.
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@jscholes @menelion This is probably one of the reasons I've seen many young blind adults not even want to touch a computer, and do everything from their phones. Because if worst comes to worst, they can use VO screen recognition, or tap around, or sighted help, and sighted people *know* phones. It's really sad, because now they are locked in. They don't *want* to make new or different tech because their phones, iPhones, obviously don't allow app creation on the phone, and then running that app and such. It could be better on Android with Termux, but blind people are comfortably numb to Android, because it's different and open, and what if they break something or what if it's not accessible enough for them, all that. So Apple it is. I hope they know just how much blind society relies on them.
@pixelate @jscholes @menelion I'm primarily a mobile user these days. I only boot up my laptop if I have to. And it's because, I feel like touch allows me to navigate more efficiently. My only gripe with mobile is that there are still some minor cases where I have to boot up my PC to do something. But I feel like it's a 90/10 split. At least in terms of my personal computing tasks.
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I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline. Operating systems, browsers, messaging apps, email clients, even command line tools.
These things are not being replaced with more #accessible alternatives, but nor does the investment exist to stop the rot within the current options.
This in itself is concerning, particularly as it mirrors tech trends more broadly. But what I worry about quite a bit is what it does for user expectations.
What happens when generations of people grow up with inefficient keyboard access models, faux desktop apps, and a thousand tiny papercuts here and there? When the new baseline is worse than it was before, it takes that bit more effort to imagine and advocate for best rather than just better.
If you're wondering what sort of #accessibility issues I mean when I say "papercuts," here are some examples:
First-letter navigation not working in commonly used parts of the Windows 11 UI, like "open with" dialogs and the system tray.
NVDA's browse mode suddenly becoming inactive and inoperable when transitioning between webpages.
Multi-line textareas being reported as "blank" in Chrome and Chromium-based apps.
Focus moving to the message list instead of the next or previous email when deleting content in Thunderbird.
These are things that can and should be fixed. But if or when they are, it'll be easy to write up another list of small, non-blocking issues that but nevertheless contribute to a frustrating, unproductive experience.
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@pixelate @jscholes @menelion I'm primarily a mobile user these days. I only boot up my laptop if I have to. And it's because, I feel like touch allows me to navigate more efficiently. My only gripe with mobile is that there are still some minor cases where I have to boot up my PC to do something. But I feel like it's a 90/10 split. At least in terms of my personal computing tasks.
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@Rosalyn @pixelate @jscholes Yes, I tried, but I don't trust it. Also, it's still slower than typing. I'm really fast, like professionally fast on the QWERTY keyboard, I'm basically a trained typist (I had such a chance at school). Plus, I do need multiple languages at once and I need to write code. I don't think restricted phone environment will satisfy my needs.
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@Rosalyn @pixelate @jscholes Yes, I tried, but I don't trust it. Also, it's still slower than typing. I'm really fast, like professionally fast on the QWERTY keyboard, I'm basically a trained typist (I had such a chance at school). Plus, I do need multiple languages at once and I need to write code. I don't think restricted phone environment will satisfy my needs.
@menelion Which is fine. Plenty of people with no additional accessibility needs can't operate entirely from a phone either.
There is absolutely no way I could perform the bulk of my work from an iPhone or iPad. Some of the reasons behind that are problems that should be fixed, and some are not. @Rosalyn @pixelate
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@Rosalyn @pixelate @jscholes Yes, I tried, but I don't trust it. Also, it's still slower than typing. I'm really fast, like professionally fast on the QWERTY keyboard, I'm basically a trained typist (I had such a chance at school). Plus, I do need multiple languages at once and I need to write code. I don't think restricted phone environment will satisfy my needs.
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If you're wondering what sort of #accessibility issues I mean when I say "papercuts," here are some examples:
First-letter navigation not working in commonly used parts of the Windows 11 UI, like "open with" dialogs and the system tray.
NVDA's browse mode suddenly becoming inactive and inoperable when transitioning between webpages.
Multi-line textareas being reported as "blank" in Chrome and Chromium-based apps.
Focus moving to the message list instead of the next or previous email when deleting content in Thunderbird.
These are things that can and should be fixed. But if or when they are, it'll be easy to write up another list of small, non-blocking issues that but nevertheless contribute to a frustrating, unproductive experience.
@jscholes Yeah, totally all this. Thanks for reminding me I need to try explorer patcher on my win 11 box to get first letter navigation back in the system tray.
As an aside I keep seeing people say Windows is more efficient to navigate than MacOS because of not requiring interaction and having more keyboard shortcuts. Which I think is true... In older Windows apps, back when MS and other developers cared about this more. Having a menu bar with shortcuts which gave apps a good hierarchy, and having working first letter nav does a lot. But then you have all the modern apps, where you have none of this. So your only option is to tab, maybe 10, 20 times to find the thing you need. Good example of this is the Windows 11 settings app which also has collapsable section buttons that you have to expand for added keystrokes. Because VoiceOver was designed for an OS that really sucked at keyboard navigation, it has tools to deal with shit like this. Windows screen readers are way nmore passive about navigation because Windows was historically way better at this, maybe with the exception of Narrator which borrows a lot from VOiceOver. I'd kill for a screen search or a browser style nav mode for NVDA that worked everywhere and not just on the web.
Oh and this is not to say modern MacOS doesn't have its own papercuts. Any app built with catalyst feels super janky with focus management and text fields sometimes read very weird. Not to mention all the other little VO things.
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@menelion I can kind of see it. Tools like screen recognition on iOS and VOCR on the Mac, and being able to explore things that might not be in the focus order, can be powerful tools.
That said: I still find that iOS and Android do a relatively poor job of handing control over to the user to find/operate things that are inaccessible. Object nav in NVDA and browser developer tools are more powerful than screen recognition or touch exploration, but understandably perceived as harder to use. @pixelate
@jscholes These flaws are hard to fix by DIY in graphical user interfaces, but in terminal based computing it is more easy. That is why I believe that the terminal is an underrated platform for blinds, also offering a much better base for predictable interaction in general.
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@jscholes Yeah, totally all this. Thanks for reminding me I need to try explorer patcher on my win 11 box to get first letter navigation back in the system tray.
As an aside I keep seeing people say Windows is more efficient to navigate than MacOS because of not requiring interaction and having more keyboard shortcuts. Which I think is true... In older Windows apps, back when MS and other developers cared about this more. Having a menu bar with shortcuts which gave apps a good hierarchy, and having working first letter nav does a lot. But then you have all the modern apps, where you have none of this. So your only option is to tab, maybe 10, 20 times to find the thing you need. Good example of this is the Windows 11 settings app which also has collapsable section buttons that you have to expand for added keystrokes. Because VoiceOver was designed for an OS that really sucked at keyboard navigation, it has tools to deal with shit like this. Windows screen readers are way nmore passive about navigation because Windows was historically way better at this, maybe with the exception of Narrator which borrows a lot from VOiceOver. I'd kill for a screen search or a browser style nav mode for NVDA that worked everywhere and not just on the web.
Oh and this is not to say modern MacOS doesn't have its own papercuts. Any app built with catalyst feels super janky with focus management and text fields sometimes read very weird. Not to mention all the other little VO things.
@pitermach @jscholes Enhanced Object navigation helps a bit with this provided you know the first letter of the object you're looking for but basically yes, Windows has messed up a lot of things that used to give it an edge over Mac OS productivity-wise.
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@jscholes Yeah, totally all this. Thanks for reminding me I need to try explorer patcher on my win 11 box to get first letter navigation back in the system tray.
As an aside I keep seeing people say Windows is more efficient to navigate than MacOS because of not requiring interaction and having more keyboard shortcuts. Which I think is true... In older Windows apps, back when MS and other developers cared about this more. Having a menu bar with shortcuts which gave apps a good hierarchy, and having working first letter nav does a lot. But then you have all the modern apps, where you have none of this. So your only option is to tab, maybe 10, 20 times to find the thing you need. Good example of this is the Windows 11 settings app which also has collapsable section buttons that you have to expand for added keystrokes. Because VoiceOver was designed for an OS that really sucked at keyboard navigation, it has tools to deal with shit like this. Windows screen readers are way nmore passive about navigation because Windows was historically way better at this, maybe with the exception of Narrator which borrows a lot from VOiceOver. I'd kill for a screen search or a browser style nav mode for NVDA that worked everywhere and not just on the web.
Oh and this is not to say modern MacOS doesn't have its own papercuts. Any app built with catalyst feels super janky with focus management and text fields sometimes read very weird. Not to mention all the other little VO things.
@pitermach @jscholes Even though this shouldn't be on an add-on to solve, the ObjPad add-on helps quite a bit.
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I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline. Operating systems, browsers, messaging apps, email clients, even command line tools.
These things are not being replaced with more #accessible alternatives, but nor does the investment exist to stop the rot within the current options.
This in itself is concerning, particularly as it mirrors tech trends more broadly. But what I worry about quite a bit is what it does for user expectations.
What happens when generations of people grow up with inefficient keyboard access models, faux desktop apps, and a thousand tiny papercuts here and there? When the new baseline is worse than it was before, it takes that bit more effort to imagine and advocate for best rather than just better.
@jscholes And then when things finally get to a decent state after years of advocacy, they're dropped in favor of something with even worse accessibility and the cycle begins again. It's like people never learn because they're so focused on chasing the newest shiny thing.
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I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline. Operating systems, browsers, messaging apps, email clients, even command line tools.
These things are not being replaced with more #accessible alternatives, but nor does the investment exist to stop the rot within the current options.
This in itself is concerning, particularly as it mirrors tech trends more broadly. But what I worry about quite a bit is what it does for user expectations.
What happens when generations of people grow up with inefficient keyboard access models, faux desktop apps, and a thousand tiny papercuts here and there? When the new baseline is worse than it was before, it takes that bit more effort to imagine and advocate for best rather than just better.
@kaveinthran @jscholes agree with you and your perspective and worry about the same
