alt.hn

6/29/2026 at 9:59:28 PM

How working with a blind client revealed invisible accessibility gaps

 https://iinteractive.com/resources/blog/read-only

by fortyseven

7/3/2026 at 10:57:55 AM

It is revealing how people with disabilities are treated, just to walk on sidewalk as a deaf person. Most cyclicts assume they have a priority on sidewalks, and will ring bell to enforce it. If you do not jump out of their way in 2 seconds, you get rammed.

Cyclists know I can not hear them (I am wearing big noise cancelling headphones). Yet they still insist on their imaginary priority on sidewalks. I was forced to remove my noise cancelling headphones, just to hear their slurs!

Cyclists on bike have no priority, they are not allowed to cycle on sidewalks! They should be using roads! I am allowed to wear my noise cancelling headphones on sidewalk! I looked it up!

by bebe9494i4

7/3/2026 at 2:11:23 PM

Sidewalks have to be usable by people who can't hear, people moving slowly, kids, older people etc. If a cyclist is on a sidewalk and can't safely pass without the pedestrian reacting instantly, they're the one creating the problem

by TimByte

7/3/2026 at 4:08:48 PM

We can't individual responsibility our way out of systemic problems. Cyclists on sidewalks generally signals terrible bike infrastructure.

There are people on bikes that ride like an asshole. There are people on cars that drive like an asshole. Both cause (different levels of) risk for pedestrians. There's only so much we can do about assholes, social ostracism works only so far and social change is much harder to accomplish than modifying our built environment to reduce or eliminate conflict points.

As an aside, I've noticed people get startled when I'm on my bike stopped but balancing on my bike while I wait for then to cross. I think some people intuitively model bikes on the same category as cars, so being anywhere close causes them to react as if a car hard crept close.

by estebank

7/3/2026 at 5:04:03 PM

Thanks for stopping.

In my experience as a pedestrian, bikes are worse than cars. Less predictable, less observant of laws, and more willing to take risks that depend on others jumping out of their way.

On the plus side, they don’t weigh 3000lbs.

by shermantanktop

7/3/2026 at 7:19:01 PM

The statistics still point towards being more concerned about cars.

by analog31

7/3/2026 at 11:24:10 PM

Statistics don’t lie, but my experience doesn’t lie either. 90% of the assholes I encounter on the road are on bicycles.

FWIW, I live in Seattle, a famously bike-friendly city. Stop signs, red lights, pedestrians and even one-way street signs don’t seem to exist in the visual field of many cyclists here.

Obviously there are reasonable law-abiding bicyclists out there. Certainly all the cyclists online say they obey all the laws. But apparently I’m seeing an entirely different group of people in the real world, zooming around lawlessly.

by shermantanktop

7/4/2026 at 3:27:05 AM

What I've noticed is that the crimes of motorists, cyclists, and even pedestrians, are crimes of opportunity and convenience. In each case it's a matter of what's possible, offset by the chance of enforcement.

Motorists exceed the speed limit, roll through stop signs, and are looking at their phones while driving.

Cyclists blow through stop signs, and take advantage of shortcuts.

Pedestrians "jaywalk." There's not much else they can do.

by analog31

7/3/2026 at 5:59:12 PM

I don’t personally know anyone hit by a car, but my dad ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung due to a drunk cyclist ramming him on the boardwalk.

Bicycles belong on the streets. (I bike to work most days, I take the streets)

by physicalecon

7/3/2026 at 5:53:11 PM

> Cyclists on sidewalks generally signals

It signals yet another asshole. No need for some complicated justifications! 90% of infrastructure is already dedicated to bikes, it is called roads!

> think some people intuitively model bikes on the same category as cars

They literally are in the same category! It is called vehicles, and vehicles are not allowed on sidewalks!

> modifying our built environment to reduce or eliminate conflict points.

How about repression and fines? Works on cars!

> startled when I'm on my bike stopped but balancing on my bike

Perhaps people just do not want to be around dangerous situations? If you fall and break something, they will have to help you.

And cyclists sometimes get angry and aggressive, when falling near pedestrians.

by bebe9494i4

7/3/2026 at 7:53:29 PM

You sure come across as calm and collected, looking for a good faith discussion...

by estebank

7/3/2026 at 8:52:24 PM

And what sort of good faith discussion you want to have?

I assume your point is:

Bikes on path are unsolvable problem, because infrastructure is bad. There is no way to solve this problem, without adding more cycling infrastructure. Assholes are bad, and we should all hate them (but cyclists are not real assholes).

Now let me tell you my positions:

Several businesses and individuals already "disrupted" sidewalks for deliveries, and long distance commute. Breaking existing rules, and moving traffic from road to sidewalks!

Adding more cycling infrastructure just adds more cyclists to sidewalks (typical excuse is that cycling paths are not safe because of motorbikes). Just like with cars, more infra means more traffic!

Road are already congested, space I city is finite, so very often "more cycling infrastructure" means turning existing sidewalks into combined cycling/walking paths with zero change.

And this problem has really simple solution: just enforce existing rules! Force cyclists to step down from bicycle when on sidewalk. We have shitton of cameras and policemen!

If roads are too dangerous, let's add more protections for cyclists. Helmet, heavy motorbike jackets, perhaps airbags... All mandatory for speeds over 20 km per hour...

by bebe9494i4

7/3/2026 at 3:01:05 PM

Cycling on sidewalks is illegal here in Canada. Surprised it's being allowed elsewhere

by singpolyma3

7/3/2026 at 4:11:28 PM

In cycling threads you always have comments both telling cyclists to stay out of sidewalks and others telling cyclists that they "only* belong in sidewalks (and away from the road they drive in).

It is legal in some places, illegal in as many others, and has caveats almost everywhere (children are almost always allowed, in other places it is based on speed, etc.).

by estebank

7/3/2026 at 3:17:54 PM

Generally it's more "overlooked" than allowed. In the UK for instance cycling on pavements (sidewalks) is unlawful but the guidance is to only enforce this if the cyclist is not giving consideration to pedestrians.

Realistically though I think it leads to the same state of play as everywhere else where pedestrians don't much fancy being hit by a faster moving and taller (if not larger) object so dodge out of the way even if they aren't necessarily obligated to.

by captainbland

7/3/2026 at 9:07:25 PM

In my part of small city east coast USA it is allowed except in the downtown business district (where it is syill mostly ignored.

On the one hand, not everyone wants to be required to have their 4yo ride on the road with no bike lane, but on the other hand, I hate having preteens on extra.heavy looking bikes below out of the way at me why they drive at nearly car speeds on the sidewalk.

Of course we wouldn't really have to ban bikes on sidewalks to deal with those preteens as preteens aren't allowed on electric bikes or electric scooters anyway in this state. And electric scooters aren't allowed on the sidewalk or road here.

by jdboyd

7/3/2026 at 5:13:07 PM

Living in the USA, I always thought cycling on sidewalks was illegal, too, but looking it up, it seems that the laws vary from street to street, city to city, and state to state, which is ridiculous IMO.

by ryandrake

7/3/2026 at 3:12:26 PM

In my part of Canada it's illegal and allowed.

by kps

7/3/2026 at 1:25:21 PM

is this a netherlands post? because normal countries dont assume human on bike IS the default

by DuperPower

7/3/2026 at 1:50:36 PM

Cyclists doing whatever they feel like is status quo everywhere. Now I'm most important sidewalk user! Now I'm a car! Now the traffic rules don't apply to me!

(Not all cyclists do this. But the rude ones are common enough that "cyclists" have gotten this reputation.)

by thrtythreeforty

7/3/2026 at 6:49:27 PM

No. In the Netherlands is not common to cycle on side walks. We have cycling lanes for that! Pedestrians and cyclists only meet at crossings. (The behaviour of cyclists in the big cities might be different though.)

by Jaxan

7/3/2026 at 9:36:33 PM

What exactly does this have to do with the article?

by mslate

7/3/2026 at 7:18:13 PM

I'm a cyclist, and I sympathize with you. Also, my mom is stone deaf, and I've observed her experiences on paths that are shared with cyclists.

My town is one of the few places where cyclists are allowed on the sidewalks, but I don't do it except for very good reasons such as along dangerous roads. Those places also tend to have no pedestrians. And I give wide berth to people on foot, typically slowing down to walking pace or even getting off my bike and walking.

Also, the bell is for "announcing" not "enforcing." It's gentler than startling someone as you pass them, or making their dog freak out. And it doesn't preclude slowing down.

by analog31

7/3/2026 at 12:16:15 PM

A pedestrian has priority on the road, that doesn't mean you should walk into the road with your eyes closed wearing noise cancelling headphones.

by fizzynut

7/3/2026 at 6:05:47 PM

Video any such interaction. They go viral easily and the culprit learns their lesson.

by khurs

7/3/2026 at 6:33:23 PM

WTF? Bicycles on sidewalks? At least where I am, that's illegal, and I'm not moving.

by bradley13

7/3/2026 at 1:27:30 PM

and then you ride in the street and drivers yell "get on the sidewalk" and try to hit you.

by scragz

7/3/2026 at 2:46:42 PM

That isn’t the fault of the sidewalk users, don’t make it their problem.

by mikestew

7/3/2026 at 12:02:31 PM

This went from "deaf people should be allowd to function in society", which is absolutely fair, to "I don't want to take any responsibility for being aware of my surroundings", which is what wearing noise-cancelling headphones in public is. You can do that but you then share some of the blame when things go wrong. Saying "well, deaf people have to deal with this so it's not my fault" isn't the defence I think you think it is. Do I close my eyes and walk blindly in public there are blind people? No.

Accomodations are for people who need them not a shield for hyper-selfishness.

I cycle and I either don't wear any headphones or I use the open ones where I can still hear my surroundings. I assume every driver is eitehr an oblivious idiot or is out to kill me. I assume it's every pedestrian's first day on Earth because that's how it seems. The level of entitlement I see on a daily basis is insane. Runners who refuse to get out of dedicated bike lanes, people who park in dedicated bike lanes, people who get annoyed that I go onto the road when I'm allowed to, people that get annoyed that I go onto the sidewalk or road because I have to (often because the bike path is blocked), people who walk 5 abreast on a shared pedestrian bike path, etc etc etc.

But what really gets me is people who have elevated their own hyper-selfishness into some kind of virtue. "I'm going to block out all noise in a public space because that's what deaf people have to deal with" is a new one for me.

Oh and as an aside, people who are deaf often aren't completely deaf. Deafness (and blindness) is a spectrum.

by jmyeet

7/3/2026 at 12:25:14 PM

Not sure where you got the "I don't want to take any responsibility for being aware of my surroundings".

GP simply pointed out cyclists are apparently super unfriendly to deaf people, inferred from the experience where GP made himself temporarily deaf.

It doesn't matter whether GP takes responsibility or not. The issue is the social phenomenon where cyclists create danger for themselves and deaf pedestrians.

> I cycle

I know it's bad to stereotype people but you're not helping it.

by hnfong

7/3/2026 at 12:35:55 PM

TBH, the whole thing reads like a pretty off-topic rant, its a leap from 'accesibility to blind users' to 'treatment of people with disabilities' to 'cyclists being aggressive towards the poster, who is neither but wears noise-cancelling headphones'. I'm not sure if there's a productive discussion to be had around it.

by rcxdude

7/3/2026 at 12:39:58 PM

"Accomodations are for people who need them not a shield for hyper-selfishness", namely people riding bicycles on sidewalks that are seen acting with an insane level entitlement while riding on dedicated walking lanes.

People act as people do regardless of their method of conveyance. A polite way of encountering a group walking where they should (and another should not ride) is to dismount the bicycle, say "excuse me" and walk through, then to remount and continue on the bike. In the case you mentioned, calling out in advance "excuse me, coming through" should just do it. If not, step up to bell ringing.

You should see what cyclists from Austin do on the Texas backroads, with their stopping in the middle of the lane at the top of a hill, doing the same on a tight curve, riding abreast... But again, people are people; they don't seem to realize road signs have a setback for a very good reason.

by nstents

7/3/2026 at 12:20:44 PM

Making sure you are fully aware of your surroundings is prudent, in case someone is acting recklessly or maliciously, but it shouldn't be a requirement.

You're not to blame at all when a cyclist runs you down on the pavement (that they shouldn't be on). Yes, you might have heard the bell without the headphones, but they're the one acting recklessly, and they're the one responsible for ensuring that they don't harm people acting normally.

There are all sorts of situations that it's possible to anticipate, but there's no moral fault ascribed for not acting defensively against every possible form of attack.

by Planktonne

7/3/2026 at 12:33:43 PM

this sounds like a mess :') i am happy here in NL most people know the rules. occasionally you hear someone huffing and puffing about an oblivious tourist but thats about it. ofc there are anti social ppl still but the average is to know well the rules and follow them. it makes it so its pretty risk free in any mode of transport.

Only motorbikes is tough because people dont like them going past them in traffic jams :/ the last bastion of decency in our traffic xD... (lets forget about people who own racing bikes they dont count)

by saidnooneever

7/3/2026 at 12:15:19 PM

People have zero obligation to be able to hear their surroundings.

Listening to music on a walk is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. It’s very slightly less safe for them, but they aren’t risking other people so that’s fine.

by Retric

7/3/2026 at 12:43:50 PM

That's simply not true and bad advice. This comes up in distracted driving cases. If you play music so loud that you can't hear your surroundings, you can become partially (or wholly) at fault for an accident [1]. I guarantee you there are situations where your intentional sensory deprivation will lead to legal liability so you have to be extra careful if you choose to do that.

You have an affirmative responsibility to act in a reasonable fashion to mitigate risks for yourself and others.

[1]: https://naqvilaw.com/las-vegas-impaired-driving-attorney/lou...

by jmyeet

7/3/2026 at 12:49:24 PM

In distracted driving cases, you're behind the wheel of a vehicle that is capable of harming others; that's why it leads to legal liability. In situations where you are not likely to cause harm, "act[ing] in a reasonable fashion to mitigate risks for yourself and others" does not require anything from you.

by Planktonne

7/3/2026 at 1:54:34 PM

All of this is really making my point. Being a pedestrian does not absolve you of all responsibility to mitigate harm. If you cycled at all you’d quickly learn just how entitled and oblivious so many pedestrians act.

Cyclists do stupid and dangerous things too. Believe me I am aware. I have to anticipate those too.

But, in my experience, nobody acts with more carelessness and selfishness than pedestrians. And I say that as one of them too.

by jmyeet

7/3/2026 at 2:32:11 PM

A pedestrian walking in a place where pedestrians are expected is not endangering cyclists. We're not talking about cycle lanes or crosswalks: we're talking about places where cyclists aren't supposed to be.

There is no requirement to mitigate all potential harms caused to unexpected hostile sources by the direct actions of unexpected hostile sources.

by Planktonne

7/3/2026 at 5:14:23 PM

> you’d quickly learn just how entitled and oblivious so many pedestrians act.

Well yes, they are indeed entitled to what they are doing. It is you who is acting entitled here - cyclists are not entitled to having pedestrians dodge them.

Your earlier vehicle example is wholly misplaced. Divers have a legal responsibility to maintain awareness of their surroundings at all times. Pedestrians do not have that. Notice that many disabilities can legally disqualify you from driving.

by fc417fc802

7/3/2026 at 2:32:07 PM

With greater powers come greater responsibilities.

by whycome

7/3/2026 at 3:11:59 PM

ride defensively, don't travel at high speed when you can see that there are pedestrians ahead who might very well turn and take a step into your lane. slowing down is not going to kill you, speed up when the way is clear.

by fsckboy

7/3/2026 at 12:50:07 PM

You seem to be misunderstanding the difference between what someone driving a car is responsible for vs. a pedestrian.

by codingdave

7/3/2026 at 9:09:55 AM

> Where I had control, I made changes. Unnecessary labels removed. Accurate alt text added — not filed-in-for-compliance alt text, actually descriptive alt text. The heading structure was cleaned up where I could reach it. For this project's SharePoint tracking page, I rerouted entirely: instead of asking users to fight through the noise, the system now sends an email update at every stage of the approval.

seems to be the only bit of text that actually details anything that was done. I would liked to have read about the actual changes and steps taken to improve accessibility instead of some kind of low key rant about MS

by jaffa2

7/3/2026 at 12:00:36 PM

Not to your critique, but from the quote, I’m alerted to the idea that filled-in-for-compliance is malicious compliance or non-compliance. I can’t imagine the frustration multiplier it must be. So much is frustrating enough on the intended mass-audience happy path.

by cwmoore

7/3/2026 at 6:27:19 PM

I'm a teacher and I've had blind students, so I am aware of the barriers. But: do an honest evaluation of the costs of full, correct accessibility vs. the number of people who benefit. A cold-blooded calculation for a company putting out a project.

It honestly is not worth it. Huge costs, and you sell...maybe an additional license or two. So no one does it.

by bradley13

7/3/2026 at 7:14:32 PM

The carrot is clearly not enough for accessibility. That's why the ADA provides the stick.

There's a large benefit for society when society is more accommodating. It's easier to notice the accommodations for limited mobility; but if you have a new limit to your mobility, you'll notice everywhere they aren't. Accommodations for limited vision are often less noticable if you don't have experience with limited vision, but many of them are not very expensive if done at the right time in the project.

by toast0

7/3/2026 at 6:34:05 PM

I understand your point, especially for company websites whose products/services aren't oriented to the blind.

However, there are many companies with products/services that are just as much for the blind as the sighted (government, insurance, legal, medical, etc.) and many of them don't even make an attempt. The blind are still people and they should have equal access.

by neverartful

7/3/2026 at 3:24:44 PM

Honestly the fact that this article still needs to be written in 2026 is the designated real-big-sad imho.

Screen readers almost entirely ignore the visual layer of any UI, and are entirely dependent on the layer that most developers ignore because it's not the visual layer. It's a perfect storm.

It stands to reason that someone who's actually used to using a screen reader should be brought in to verify what you've built actually works well for that target audience.

I'm a fully blind accessibility auditor, remediator and trainer myself, but I wouldn't dare to assume to know how a mobility-impaired user using eyegaze tech fares on a website I've audited.

My eyes don't gaze, so I don't have the context to make those calls.

On that note: I'm looking for work, anyone need me to tell them how their UI is bad for accessibility and fix it for them so they don't get sued later? :P

by zersiax

7/3/2026 at 5:36:32 PM

I'd like to connect with you offline for further conversation. I didn't see any contact information in your profile (and there's none currently in mine either).

by neverartful

7/4/2026 at 11:38:38 AM

I'm not a hard person to find. My hackernews handle into a search engine gets you myriad ways to contact me (Mastodon, LinkedIn, etc.) but I'm at florianbeijers [at] google's mail service if email is your preferred mode of communication. I have a website at florianbeijers.xyz with a contact form, its just very much a placeholder and not really currently meant for public consumption until I revamp it

by zersiax

7/3/2026 at 1:44:54 PM

The annoying and counterintuitive part of accessibility work is that there are some architectural decisions that are very hard to undo, don't seem that significant, but will absolutely bite you when you need to implement accessibility.

If you decide on a GUI framework which doesn't communicate semantics to the underlying APIs properly, you have no good options. Either you rewrite your entire project in a different framework just to deliver one feature, dive deep into framework guts to fix the issue (which may be written in an entirely different language and outside your area of expertise), or do some ugly hack on top to sort-of make it work.

A lot of accessibility issues, especially historically, essentially boiled down to "developer chose the wrong approach and didn't know how to get themselves out of the situation later."

It's better now because we went from desktop frameworks drawing their own pixels on screen to web frameworks creating div soup, and div soup is much easier to fix than having pixels instead of native OS controls, but it still happens occasionally. The most recent one I personally ran into was WindScribe, who made a desktop GUI framework of their own for no good reason, and now they can't fix accessibility without a whole lot of work.

by miki123211

7/3/2026 at 3:17:33 PM

The solution, that accessibility advocates have been clamoring for for decades now, is to s"shift left".

If you know you're going to add accessibility, which ... we have had WCAG since 2005, not knowing that at this point is negligence imho, just make sure you work with frameworks and libraries that won't require overhauling all the things when the PO or management finally get sued into letting devs actually implement it properly. If that kind of functionality takes a backseat to "stunning" and "beaituful" designs that a bunch of people can't use, we take the user out of user interface.

by zersiax

7/3/2026 at 5:20:24 PM

We should stop thinking about accessibility as if it's some kind of feature that you "add" into the product later in development. This "add it later" mentality doesn't work for security, and it definitely doesn't work for accessibility. Like security, accessibility should be baked into the product's design from the very beginning. It should be part of the product's basic requirements.

by ryandrake

7/4/2026 at 11:43:16 AM

Doesn't work for security, not for accessibility, not usually for localization and internationalization, it doesn't work for bandwidth optimization... yet we all keep making UIs that really only work on 300 inch Apple Studio displays and screw anyone who isn't Murrican, rich, in a place with good internet, able-bodied and preferably willing to fork over all their personal data, voluntarily or involuntarily. There's a reason people burn out doing accessibility work, it's incredibly draining to have to swim against the current as much as we do, and actually HAVING a disability compounds that problem. We know how to do it best because we live this life, yes, but we also take the brunt when someone up top decides forking out a 3000000 dollar bonus to the CEO is more important than actually enabling users to use the product.

by zersiax

7/3/2026 at 2:21:25 PM

The web has its own problems, but at least bad HTML is often still visible enough to repair. A custom canvas-like desktop UI can be basically a black box to assistive tech

by TimByte

7/4/2026 at 11:46:39 AM

Very true :)

I had this exact issue with the Elgato StreamDeck user interface, which renders the macro buttons as one big canvas only drag-and-drop interacts with.

It's rare that I outright cannot figure out a way to make a UI accessible, but that one managed to break everything I tossed at it. I eventually switched my effforts to an open-source third party client which had a web UI, which is now accessible to screen reader users.

As for repairing HTML, my last few engagements have clearly shown me that while HTML CAN be repaired, many devs these days wouldn't know where to even begin to do that. The amount of hand-holding I've had to do has made me suggest, several times, to just give me git access as it'd be faster if I just fix it myself.

by zersiax

7/3/2026 at 2:07:27 PM

The "read only" example is such a good illustration of how accessibility problems often aren't one big broken thing, but a bunch of tiny reasonable-seeming decisions stacked together

by TimByte

7/3/2026 at 3:19:58 PM

So many things are like that. Trying to bolt on accessibility or security as an afterthought never work as well as making those things part of the initial design.

I've been at this long enough that yes I know that just getting something out the door so we can make money is important.

But this just creates another kind of technical debt that comes back to bite you.

by GarnetFloride

7/4/2026 at 11:06:52 AM

So, at this point any company that doesn’t want ai agents navigating on their webpages have to kill the accessibility.

And they do and will. Blind users are a tiny tiny part of users. But hurting usability for the disabled is bad PR. So of course they do it “accidentally”.

by troglodytetrain

7/3/2026 at 9:45:36 AM

> revealed invisible

Interesting that the language of sight is so prevalent that it appears in this very title twice.

Echoing other comments, this would be a stronger article if it went into more specifics, but the AI voice precludes that meaningfully.

by Planktonne

7/3/2026 at 2:15:20 PM

The "invisible" point is interesting, although I'm not sure I'd read too much into it. Visual metaphors are so baked into English that avoiding all of them can start to feel a bit performative unless the wording is actually excluding someone

by TimByte

7/3/2026 at 2:22:26 PM

> Visual metaphors are so baked into English

This is the point I am making.

by Planktonne

7/3/2026 at 3:05:43 PM

I thought of it as a pun

by singpolyma3

7/3/2026 at 10:42:28 AM

> Interesting that the language of sight is so prevalent that it appears in this very title twice.

Well, it appears once in "invisible", and once in "blind"... but I don't see why "blind" is a surprise when talking about someone blind.

There is no reference to sight in "reveal".

by thaumasiotes

7/3/2026 at 12:14:24 PM

Not an immediately explicit one, but to reveal is to unveil [1] is to remove a covering that blocks sight specifically.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/reveal

by Planktonne

7/3/2026 at 3:30:22 PM

I always find it interesting to see that while we watch people struggle to get through a UI , unable to see the forest through the trees while they just want to get done with the task they, when they eyeball it, should only take five minutes but takes five hours instead, we get blinded by talking about the use of the word blindspot or the order in which we should say visual, impairment and person. meanwhile the UI never gets fixed and the cycle repeats when the next person shows up. As a blind person myself, I truly don't see the problem with using visual terminology given we don't live in a value, and while I understand some people go looking for a fight after the 30th inaccessible mandatory form they have to fill out that day, I've always preferred a more measured approach.

by zersiax

7/3/2026 at 5:16:40 PM

The language isn't even being criticized here, just remarked upon. I think that's fair.

by handoflixue

7/3/2026 at 2:18:19 PM

Yeah, blind seems unavoidable there, since it's literally about a blind client

by TimByte

7/4/2026 at 1:30:46 AM

Recently went to a restaurant that is fully blacked out and has blind waiters. Pretty fascinating experience.

The inability to identify food when you take away visual clues was much much worse than expected. Even just beef vs chicken which I would have laughed at if you suggested that to me beforehand. But nope…one slightly exotic sauce on chicken and everyone was confused.

by Havoc

7/3/2026 at 3:16:05 PM

Revealing that, after 30 years of Internet, someone's actually confronting this situation for the first time. So's the word 'gaps' ... as if the English Channel is a 'gap' for swimmers.

Equally revealing is the audio quality of most CPU screen-readers (regardless of platform). Usually, not far from the crappy first attempts of 30 years ago.

But then, hey, it's a small market, right?

by 8bitsrule

7/3/2026 at 7:10:07 PM

Most people who depend on screen readers prefer the synthetic voices for their consistency which can allow them "read" at far faster speeds. I've been working for a couple of years to reach the speed one of my friend regularly works at, about 900 WPM. I topped out around 550 WPM with the human-sounding voices and then almost immediately got to 650 moving to a synthetic voices. Still a long way to go to hit 900, but I'm certain it's possible, and nearly certain it's impossible with text that's voiced to sound human-like.

by asadotzler

7/4/2026 at 11:35:44 AM

I've been occasionally helping a blind friend of mine with his PC since 2005. His screenreader talks at about 600wpm or more and after 20 years of practice I can't understand it.

I speedread and can read text faster than his computer's voice -- but not by much. It is very impressive, and very hard to use.

But I am the only sighted person he's met who can use his PC. I navigate Windows mostly by keyboard, and he has no mouse. It slows me down slightly but I can still use it.

(He does have a screen on his family computer, so sighted family and friends can watch films with him. His work one has no screen.)

by lproven

7/3/2026 at 5:45:19 PM

My company has a team of accessibility impacted testers who will assess any web/device work we do. It is invaluable and they can always find things that were missed regardless of how many tools we use to help in development.

by gaoshan

7/3/2026 at 9:36:17 AM

While the content was interesting, the AI-slop-stench was repelling.

Talking about AI (sorry!), perhaps an AI assisted screen reader could remove repetitive elements (it appends "(read only)" to every. single. field.) in a smart fashion? Does this already exist?

We're seeing AI being used to improve a11y in quite a few places: (Live) transcripts for video conferences, image to text (VQA, visual question answering) etc.

by Tepix

7/3/2026 at 3:19:35 PM

No. There are certainly AI-generated accessibility solutions for single, existing applications, games and websites but no outright AI-powered screen reader. I'd think the token cost alone would make such a project prohibitively expensive, although one-off AI features are starting to sneak into JAWS and NVDA as we spaek, so who knows.

by zersiax

7/3/2026 at 5:31:35 PM

It's not as though the task requires a frontier size LLM. A small on device model should suffice for most clean up.

But if you did want to run a full size model deepseek v4 flash is so cheap that I doubt even many hours of web browsing would have a noticeable cost.

by fc417fc802

7/4/2026 at 2:53:59 AM

A relatively small and fast LLM (30b MoE) would probably suffice. It‘s something you can run locally with a nice GPU.

by Tepix

7/4/2026 at 12:00:58 AM

latency would be the killer. a very tiny delay between pressing a key and hearing a response can make a screen reader feel unresponsive.

by RobMurray

7/3/2026 at 12:11:24 PM

Note the irony in the title.

by monster_group

7/3/2026 at 9:03:19 AM

> It took 18 hours of work.

So a couple of days plus a few hours. Seems reasonable.

by edu

7/3/2026 at 11:20:06 AM

Originally expected to take 2 hours. I think the writer is just saying it was a lot more than expected.

by harvey9

7/3/2026 at 6:49:48 PM

[flagged]

by devoncox

7/3/2026 at 5:33:54 PM

[flagged]

by neverartful

7/3/2026 at 2:18:02 PM

In general you WANNA see any people using your app.

Read an "accessibility" spec or a requirement or a UX "good practice" is not a substitute for see how people use it!

One of my anecdotes from back in the day: The secretary of a school that use the app I help develop call about problems reading data, that comes in CD. We can't do much by phone so I travel to the town to try to debug on site (bring dev tools in the day where that means diskettes and cds, we were transitioning from FoxPro 2.6 DOS to Visual Fox Windows 95).

Eventually after some time the secretary put the coffee cup in the CD tray.

Go figure!

by mamcx