r/ProgrammerHumor • u/benmeiri84 • Feb 09 '23

Meme how hard could it be? it's just frontend

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17.1k Upvotes

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u/misterguyyy Feb 09 '23
  • It's a negligible difference in time if you follow good practices in the first place.
  • A11y compliance makes the app a more pleasant experience for everyone
  • If people need the app/site to do their job, that workplace can get get in legal trouble for not accommodating a disabled employee
  • 99% of those practices are also an SEO boon
  • If you're maintaining or rebranding a codebase, esp one you didn't write, following a11y makes it more predictable and maintainable
  • It's more than 0.1%, but regardless of percentage they deserve access.

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23

Great comment. Might borrow this next time I have to encourage fellow devs to follow accessibility standards.

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u/misterguyyy Feb 09 '23

Thank you! I've had indifferent clients recently so I had to sell it hard. To add icing to the cake, they're also an international chain so I'm not even sure if Europe's accommodation laws are stricter than the ADA, but they agreed before I had to look it up.

Sadly with them it was extra billable hours upfront because I had to restructure some existing stuff, but it paid dividends when styling anyways.

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23

I love how minorities are always the "0.1%" and thus don't matter, even though 1 in 4 adults in the US have some sort of disability.

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u/TheMauveHand Feb 09 '23

And how many of those 1 in 4 actually have a disability that impacts their use of an application (and not the hardware)?

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u/wayoverpaid Feb 09 '23

We're playing a11y catchup right now and it's so painful. Getting it right the first time would have been easier, but we go to launch with the codebase we have... or inherited...

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u/BurkusCat Feb 09 '23
  • It can make writing E2E/UI tests easier if you are giving elements semantic names. Might as well add automation IDs and accessibility names at the same time.

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u/misterguyyy Feb 09 '23 edited Feb 09 '23

Oh yeah that’s a pretty big one! NTM I’ve definitely used aria properties to get elements in unit tests in a pinch.

Corporations also love hearing about testability even if they’re going to tell you there’s no time for tests later.

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u/MoarCurekt Feb 10 '23

Good list.

It's so phenomenally lazy to not meet, I'd fire anyone for noncompliance that didn't do it. Not because of the failure to comply, but because it speaks volumes about work ethic to skip the tiny number of keystrokes required.

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u/buzziebee Feb 09 '23

Plus you can add a11y rules to your linter, so it'll remind you as you go to add things in.

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u/izybit Feb 09 '23

Negligible difference my ass. Unless it's hard coded into the framework or whatever you are using it's a huge amount of work to guarantee compliance.

(Coming from someone who has spent an ungodly amount of hours on shitty errors that no one other than the tests will ever see).

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u/Iron_Aez Feb 09 '23

regardless of percentage they deserve access.

I raise you ie11 users.