Thanks for that. I couldn't read this article the first time it came up on
a mailing list I was on because of the nytimes login requirement.
The thing that this article does not point out is that in general, making a
site accessible is relatively easy, and largely consists of not doing fancy
useless things with their html code.
Javascript probably makes more sites inaccessible than any other technology I
can think of.
Especially when javascript is used to handle things that html already does.
A properly designed web site will be perfectly accessible, and there's no
need to resort to AI or any other kind of tools to get the job done. The
problem is that webmasters (or more often than not) page generators haven't a
clue about accessibility, and don't know that simple things like image
descriptions, button labels and real html code (instead of javascript) do way
more to make a site accessible than some automated generator that has
templates that are loaded with garbage just to fill out the page size, so
folks don't feel cheated, or so that the company generating the generator can
claim the most capabilities over all other generators.
It's rather silly to be honest.
t-mobile is one of the sites that uses one of these site generator things to
make the site accessible. It (mostly) works, but there's one major issue,
and that's that a screen reader user can't actually order anything on their
site, because the button to confirm your selections after all is said and
done isn't viewable by the screen reader. Kind of defeats the purpose of
having that accessibility mode, but <shrug>
I've complained about that many times, and nothing has been done, yet, and I
expect nothing will be done anytime soon.
I bug the hell out of them by calling them on the phone, and making them do
the order that way. They keep complaining I don't use the site, and I keep
complaining it doesn't work, so calls can get quite entertaining.
On 7/17/2022 1:39 PM, Gisle Vanem wrote:
Karen Lewellen wrote:
>
> sharing this article, not only because it is terrific, but it fortifies
> ways continuing to keep Lynx at the table creates solutions.
> Few tools manage basic code better speaking personally.
> Kare
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2022 12:45:43 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: For Blind Internet Users, the Fix Can Be Worse Than the Flaws
>
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/technology/ai-web-accessibility.html
For those w/o a New York Times subscription, I've
scraped it and saved it as a PDF here:
https://www.watt-32.net/misc/For-Blind-Internet-Users-NYT.pdf
(or use Lynx or turn off JavaScript in Chrome etc.)