HN Explorer

Ask HN: Should HN care about accessibility?

7 points by wizofaus ↗ HN
I've noticed the HN site fails quite a number of key WCAG accessibility metrics (particularly around colour contrast, but even more basic stuff to ensure the site makes sense to screen readers and those needing assistive technology). Most would be simple to fix and I believe would benefit a not insignificant percentage of the userbase. As HN readers should we care? Are there any current users who have had issues using the site because of this?

7 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 23.4 ms ] thread
PaulHoule
Contrast could be a problem.

I find it hard to believe it would be that hard to use with a screen reader even though a little bit of tagging to direct the screen reader to start in the right place, navigate more effectively, etc. would help.

I work on a medium-sized SPA and spent some time making it work perfectly with a screen reader, it certainly is much harder for something like my application than it would be for HN.

wizofaus
Have you witnessed users using screen readers? It's kinda mind blowing, especially the speed the information is read out. Interestingly some of the guidelines are potentially problematic in that for such users it's often better not to even know about decorative images such as logos etc., but most checkers/tutorials encourage developers to add Alt text to everything.
PaulHoule
It’s in the guidelines that 100% decorative images don’t need alt text.

In general I think the model of ‘follow a bunch of rules’ is less effective than ‘bring a screen reader user in to help with testing’ but few organizations will do the later. At one point though I was pretty good at using the app I work on in a screen reader.

wizofaus
The problem is when the logo serves some other purpose, like on HN where it takes you back to the home page, and that's not uncommon. Alt text describing what the image is isn't all that useful to a blind user, but text describing what the link does may well be. Yet many of the examples you see online just suggest adding "Company logo" as the Alt text, or even "Company logo that's a stylised letter Y contained by a square border". No screen-reader user wants to hear that every time they navigate to a new page!