[josephg]

> - Almost no one does accessibility properly in web apps.

Screen readers can still (badly) work on web sites that haven't been made with accessibility in mind. And if you find you need to add proper accessibility to a web or native app, you can. With something like godot, you might have to rewrite the entire GUI to get accessibility working properly.

> - Using Electron does not give you accessibility in any way.

Yes it does. Electron gives you basic out-of-the-box crossplatform support for accessibility, just like chrome. And you can tweak the screen reader output the same way you would a website. See: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/accessibility

> - What laws?

EU: According to the first google result, by September 23 2020 all websites and mobile apps must be accessible to everyone, have a public accessibility policy, provide a feedback mechanism for users to report inaccessible content and provide a link to the enforcement procedure:

https://siteimprove.com/en-au/accessibility/eu-web-accessibi...

California (govt): As of July 2019 all websites made by the state of california must be accessible: https://www.levelaccess.com/california-passes-new-digital-ac... . There's similar results at the US federal level.

> - I don't know of any business doing general purpose commercial applications that has faced any issues with that.

You don't know anyone who's faced issues yet. Momentum behind these laws is growing in most countries, bolstered by the 2008 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - which requires countries to "Provide information in accessible formats and technologies appropriate to different kinds of disabilities in a timely manner and without additional cost". In the US and Canada the law currently only requires government websites to be accessible, but its not a safe bet to assume things will stay like that.

[jfkebwjsbx]

> web sites

We are talking about web apps, not web sites.

> the screen reader output

The screen reader is not supported or useless on most web apps.

Again, we are talking apps and their GUI (web and native), not sites or documents.

> With something like godot, you might have to rewrite the entire GUI

Again a "might". I don't see any reason why you need any "rewrite".

> laws

Those are not for general purpose commercial apps as I wrote, only for public or specialized apps.

> You don't know anyone who's faced issues yet.

So then it is fear mongering, aka FUD.

> Provide information in accessible formats and technologies

Information, not GUI on apps.

Public information, at that.

It is simply impossible to require at the moment accessibility for web apps or native apps.

It does not even make sense for a huge amount of software. For example, an image editor or the vast majority of games cannot be accessible for a blind person with current technology.

Accessibility is critical on information and documents, not on common apps. That is why things like websites using fancy web frameworks just to display text is bad because they tend to break it. Nobody is discussing that, you are conflating apps with documents.

[einpoklum]

If you've made a "web app", it must be accessible through the web, i.e. it is either a web site or a part of web site, according to all sorts of laws including probably the ones mentioned by the GP post.

Forget about the fear-mongering - think about the actual people with disabilities though.

[tashoecraft]

Whether your site is a "webapp" or a "website" is meaningless in terms of the law if we are talking about sites you visit through a browser.

[walski]

The cited laws only cover public bodies, though. They are not applicable to websites or applications built in the private sector.

[josephg]

Yes; for now.

If you're in the public sector, or have customers in the EU or Australia, you might get sued or fined if your app isn't accessible.

Weirdly even in the US you might not be in the clear for internal tooling. My understanding is its illegal to refuse to hire a blind person because they're blind. If you hire someone who's blind and they can't do their job because your internal tools are written in Godot, you might be leaving yourself open to discrimination suits. Not a big deal when you're a startup, but it will matter at google / fb / etc. I'm sure google has blind employees today who care a great deal about being able to do their jobs.

That sounds like a legal minefield, with more mines added over time.

In short, if you aren't making a video game or a toy, it seems like good advice to use tools that work with accessibility.

(I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.)

[jfkebwjsbx]

So you agree you are spreading FUD then.

1. There is no law on the horizon that will require any accessibility for general purpose commercial apps.

2. Further, one can add accessibility features on Godot or other engines if needed. No technical limitation whatsoever.

3. If such laws came to be in a decade or two, engines and frameworks of all kinds will most likely support those features on their own.

4. The only case you can make against Godot is that someone has a company which hires people; and finds a blind person that is as productive as a non-blind to the point they are the best candidate for the job; and the company is in a country with such laws; and someone is an asshole that does not want to hire such person even if they are the best; and the position requires to use Godot tools; and the tools are non-accessible to begin with; and that someone does not want to spend the money to make them accesible; and the rejected candidate sues you and wins the case.

No business will even think about such an scenario. In an ideal world, they would. In the real world, they don't. And I am siding with the blind person in such a case and hoping such a company is busted in that case. But the case is extremely rare.

[marcus_holmes]

So, as a busines risk, for a commercial startup, this is pretty negligable, right?

Even if they widen the scope, EU commercial laws on this kind of thing (e.g. content filters) tend to be only applied to companies over a certain revenue level (10m euros for the content filters).

Also, EU regulation is enforced differently to US regulation. EU regulators tend to ask nicely the first time, and only impose fines if it's a repeat offence, or the company has flat-out refused to do anything about the problem.

In other words, even if the regulation scope is widened, anyone building their GUI with Godot will probably have enough revenue and be given enough time to rebuild it completely before they'll reach the point of "business-killing" fines.

<of course, being accessible is a good thing in its own right, and I'm glad Godot appear to be doing something about it>

[dragonwriter]

> They are not applicable to websites or applications built in the private sector.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, however, is applicable to private businesses; though (unless things have changed recently) there is currently an unresolved three-way split in federal circuits about high it applies to website with the Third Circuit saying it doesn’t, the First, Second, and Seventh Circuits saying it does generally, and the Sixth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits splitting the difference and saying it does if their is sufficient nexus between the website and a physical location of business, and the California State Courts seem to (in applying the state Unruh Civil Rights Act, which includes among it's triggers ADA violations) holding that it is at least applicable in the nexus case.