Helping users who seem strangely uninterested in solving their problems
I don’t think this is unrelated to the “Deaf” community’s “hearing aids/cochlear implants are genocide” position. I suspect getting other people to submit to their arbitrary whims is the point, and the “problems” are in fact the means to that end.
I would guess it’s because the Americans with Disabilities Act provides a private right of action against businesses whose websites are not accessible to people with disabilities, but doesn’t say anything about screen reader software bugs.
I would guess most of them just want their screen readers to work, but a badly written law assigns the responsibility for fixing it to the wrong party, probably due to excessive faith in Coase’s theorem.
Yes, that may be part of it. I suspect, however, that in this case it is a slightly different (though somewhat related) dynamic that’s mostly responsible.
“Accessibility advocate” is qualification which leads naturally to “accessibility expert”; and there is a certain amount of demand for such people (e.g., as consultants on projects which are required by regulations to be “accessible”, or which otherwise benefit from being able to claim to be “accessible”). Such people have an incentive to establish their credentials and their credibility by talking about what web developers must do in order to make their websites accessible, to frequently mention accessibility in Hacker News discussions, to write blog posts about accessibility best practices, etc.
They do not have any incentive whatever to help to fix bugs in screen reader programs. What would that do for them? The better such programs work, the less work there is for these people to do, the less there is to talk about on the subject of how to make your website accessible (“do nothing special, because screen readers work very well and will simply handle your website properly without you having to do anything or think about the problem at all” hardly constitutes special expertise…), the less demand there is for them on the job market…
None of this helps actual vision-impaired users, of course. It’s a classic principal-agent problem.
They do not have any incentive whatever to help to fix bugs in screen reader programs. What would that do for them? The better such programs work, the less work there is for these people to do, the less there is to talk about on the subject of how to make your website accessible (“do nothing special, because screen readers work very well and will simply handle your website properly without you having to do anything or think about the problem at all” hardly constitutes special expertise…), the less demand there is for them on the job market…
You don’t even need to describe this as a baptist-and-bootleggers problem to explain most of the lack of actual bug fixing.
A frontend developer who runs into accessibility-related browser bugs all day and gets very good at working around them and publicizing how to work around them is unlikely to be a competent C++ developer who is capable of going into browser-engine codebases and actually fixing the bugs.
If even one out of every ten accessibility advocates/experts/etc. did these things, then all these bugs would’ve been fixed years ago.
Maybe you’re aware of an OOM more accessibility advocates than I am, but I come across all sorts of well-written blog posts explaining this or that bug, which browser/etc. it happens in, and how to work around it. That’s most of the bullet points, although it might not be in the bug tracker of choice for the project.
What people aren’t doing, as far as I have seen, is starting pooled-funds bug bounties for these things. People pass the collection plate for childhood cancer, especially since I’m told that September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, but not bugfixing.
This is not insensible: all sorts of people tend to be unwilling to set aside the cost of a new cell phone to fix one bug apiece that, generally speaking, is encountered in one’s day job.
And there are a lot of accessibility bugs out there, some of which are quite old. I can only assume that accessibility bugs aren’t treated massively more seriously than anything else in the WebKit or Firefox Bugzillas.
While the world would be a better place if bug-bounty collection plates were more popular, I can see why they’re not as popular as I’d like.
I don’t think this is unrelated to the “Deaf” community’s “hearing aids/cochlear implants are genocide” position. I suspect getting other people to submit to their arbitrary whims is the point, and the “problems” are in fact the means to that end.
I would guess it’s because the Americans with Disabilities Act provides a private right of action against businesses whose websites are not accessible to people with disabilities, but doesn’t say anything about screen reader software bugs.
That’s basically agreement with my “getting other people to submit to their arbitrary whims,” isn’t it?
I would guess most of them just want their screen readers to work, but a badly written law assigns the responsibility for fixing it to the wrong party, probably due to excessive faith in Coase’s theorem.
Yes, that may be part of it. I suspect, however, that in this case it is a slightly different (though somewhat related) dynamic that’s mostly responsible.
“Accessibility advocate” is qualification which leads naturally to “accessibility expert”; and there is a certain amount of demand for such people (e.g., as consultants on projects which are required by regulations to be “accessible”, or which otherwise benefit from being able to claim to be “accessible”). Such people have an incentive to establish their credentials and their credibility by talking about what web developers must do in order to make their websites accessible, to frequently mention accessibility in Hacker News discussions, to write blog posts about accessibility best practices, etc.
They do not have any incentive whatever to help to fix bugs in screen reader programs. What would that do for them? The better such programs work, the less work there is for these people to do, the less there is to talk about on the subject of how to make your website accessible (“do nothing special, because screen readers work very well and will simply handle your website properly without you having to do anything or think about the problem at all” hardly constitutes special expertise…), the less demand there is for them on the job market…
None of this helps actual vision-impaired users, of course. It’s a classic principal-agent problem.
You don’t even need to describe this as a baptist-and-bootleggers problem to explain most of the lack of actual bug fixing.
A frontend developer who runs into accessibility-related browser bugs all day and gets very good at working around them and publicizing how to work around them is unlikely to be a competent C++ developer who is capable of going into browser-engine codebases and actually fixing the bugs.
Uh-huh, and what about the people who aren’t front-end developers, either, but only “advocates”, “experts” (but not the kind that write code), etc.?
To help with projects like “an open-source screen reader”, it is not necessary to be able to write C++ (or whatever) code. You can also:
file well-written and well-documented bug reports, including testing with various setups, detailed replication steps, etc.
survey alternate software options, cataloguing which of them correctly handle the relevant test cases, and how
find people who do have the relevant expertise and may be willing to contribute code, and connect them with the maintainers
contribute funding to the project and/or help to convince other people to contribute funding
other (i.e., “reach out to the maintainer(s) to ask them what would help get the bug fixed, then do that”)
If even one out of every ten accessibility advocates/experts/etc. did these things, then all these bugs would’ve been fixed years ago.
Maybe you’re aware of an OOM more accessibility advocates than I am, but I come across all sorts of well-written blog posts explaining this or that bug, which browser/etc. it happens in, and how to work around it. That’s most of the bullet points, although it might not be in the bug tracker of choice for the project.
What people aren’t doing, as far as I have seen, is starting pooled-funds bug bounties for these things. People pass the collection plate for childhood cancer, especially since I’m told that September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, but not bugfixing.
This is not insensible: all sorts of people tend to be unwilling to set aside the cost of a new cell phone to fix one bug apiece that, generally speaking, is encountered in one’s day job.
And there are a lot of accessibility bugs out there, some of which are quite old. I can only assume that accessibility bugs aren’t treated massively more seriously than anything else in the WebKit or Firefox Bugzillas.
While the world would be a better place if bug-bounty collection plates were more popular, I can see why they’re not as popular as I’d like.