[mltony]

Blind developer here.

So surprised to see so many negative comments here. Wondering if wheelchair users were hated back in the days when the law about wheelchair ramps was passed. Accessibility of websites is a real problem for blind people. And the thing is it is relatively easy to make your website accessible:

* Use simple HTML controls: all of them work great in all screenreaders. Only when custom behavior is implemented in javascript this might cause problems. * Test accessibility with keyboard. That fancy combobox that you wrote that expands with beautiful navigation cannot be opened from keyboard.

This ADA guidance actually doesn't even mention this. Sure, providing alt descriptions can be useful but it's almost never preventing me from using a website. But a combobox or a button that won't click is a real problem. But I hope this is just the first step in making Internet more blind-friendly.

[noobermin]

About four months ago, I used to cycle every week to the store, but an auto-immune disorder has me now disabled and I use a wheelchair. A lot of this annoying attitude honestly is people really feel like accessibility is for "other people" and many just lack empathy in general. But really, no one lives forever, no one is 25 forever hitting the bars every night, even abled bodied people grow old and their bodies change or like me, an illness or injury can strike without warning. At the very least if you cannot be empathetic to other people who are disabled just know that one day it could be you and you'll be thankful someone somewhere thought of accessibility. Today, the ramps I used to walk my bike up to the walkway under my apartment are now a godsend for the wheelchair and the stairs that I used to haul my bike up begrudgingly are now a curse.

This is a cringe analogy but may be, just may be this will help since this is hacker news: think of the "Master Foo and the Programming Prodigy" and how writing comments is for your "future self." Well, making things accessible is for your future elderly or injured self if you're able bodied today. If you can't do it for others out of mere empathy, at the very least do it for a potential version of yourself in the future!

[0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/prodigy.html

[toto444]

There is a category of non disabled people who benefit from wheelchair accesses : parents of newborns who have to push a buggy wherever they go. I find it interesting that this positive side effect is rarely mentioned in the discussions about this topic.

Edit : this is actually mentionned in other comments.

[runarberg]

Same with the web. Fully abled users benefit from keyboard accessibility when e.g. their mouse runs out of batteries, or they’re dominant hand is occupied (e.g. carrying baby).

[Mezzie]

Also accessibility isn't all or nothing. A lot of elderly people benefit from low vision concerns being incorporated into web design.

[ikiris]

They still are if you talk to small business owners. Vast majority of people want to completely ignore accommodation and absolutely hate being told to do the bare minimum for other people, especially when it costs them money or time. Many of them rail against how the "government" or some other boogeyman lawyer is after them and how they're the victim when they ignore the needs, and are then cajoled into meeting legal minimum requirements.

This site especially has a vocal block of libertarian leaning self centered priviliged tech workers who see an affront in doing anything for anyone other than themselves, even if it is in their own best interest.

[sterlind]

I have progressive mobility loss. one time I went down the stairs to a bar, assuming there'd be an elevator back up - it was a big building. Bartender just told me to fuck off. I had to crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees with a friend behind me, holding my walker and ready to catch me if I fell.

if the bartender had been apologetic I wouldn't have felt so furious, but his utter disdain had my blood boiling.

[Zircom]

Is there a reason he should be apologizing? He's a bartender, the only thing he's responsible for is serving you drinks, he has absolutely no say in the accessibility accommodations the building chooses to put in. I don't really blame him for telling you to fuck off if you kept pestering/berating him after he told you there's no an elevator. What exactly did you expect him to do?

[sterlind]

I didn't pester or berate him. I asked him once. He didn't literally tell me to fuck off, he just said no and went back to cleaning up, clearly uninterested in helping me. It was a big, two-story building, like a complex, so I'm sure there was an elevator at least for employee use (nobody's dragging kegs down all those stairs.) He just made it very clear with his body language he wasn't interested in helping me, and that my question annoyed him.

But no, I didn't pester him, I just went to seethe in a corner and ask my friends for help.

[Zircom]

Okay, so maybe don't lie on the internet and go around telling people a bartender told you to fuck off when all he said was "No" and we won't have to make assumptions about what you had to have done to get a service worker to tell you "Fuck off".

Also -- if the bar is on the first floor why would they be taking kegs upstairs in the first place?

[5ESS]

If he let you into the employee-restricted part of the building to use the elevator he would probably get in trouble with management and lose his job. How is that a fair expectation?

[sterlind]

I've been escorted through restricted areas before for accessibility reasons. it's pretty normal. assuming more than one person is working in the bar, all he needed to do is get someone to accompany me. he could also have checked with his boss to make sure it's okay. also, complying with the ADA isn't optional. I could have sued them, and I bet management would have liked that even less.

also, how is it a reasonable expectation for me to crawl on my hands and knees up a flight of grimy stairs in public? why don't you try it sometime? it'd give you a taste of what it's like for me to live.

[exolymph]

> Is there a reason he should be apologizing?

Good manners? The business he represents is unable to accommodate a customer's needs. He should be nice about that. We have no indication that the bartender got berated.

[Zircom]

An apology from someone who has absolutely no ability to influence those decisions or policies isn't a sincere one, and is basically coerced under threat of getting in trouble when someone complains to their boss that they weren't "understanding enough".

Are you American by chance? I find that lots of Americans seem to want and even feel they're owed that kind of false sincerity/kindness from "low skill" workers they interact with.

Also I doubt it got to the point of someone telling OP to fuck off just for asking if there's an elevator, there has to be more to that story.

Also also there's no indication that the same business that owns the bar is the same business that owns the building, maybe they just rent a space on the bottom floor. So again, not the bartenders responsibility to apologize for something they have no control over, and possibly they're not even a representative of the same business that owns the building that chose not to include the accommodations.

In regards to accessibility accommodations, the only responsibility I can see to the bartender is telling people that there's not an elevator when they ask and he seems to have fulfilled that.

[ClumsyPilot]

'not the bartenders responsibility to apologize for something they have no control over, and possibly they're not even a representative of the same business that owns the building that chose not to include the accommodations.'

So if you have a serious situatuon, like a disabled person stuck in the basement, and the responce is just, leave them there? Like what has to happen for the barment to get off his ass and get the manager?

- 'Mate, you have a dead body at the bar!'

- 'Sorry pal, calling the police is not part of my job description'

To the customer, you represent the business. I see no reason why an able bodied man can't help, but if so, he should get someone who can. Whatever is the highest level manager or owner present has figure out the problem

[letitbeirie]

> Americans seem to want and even feel they're owed that kind of false sincerity/kindness from "low skill" workers they interact with

This is true to a sometimes weird degree, but...

> there's no indication that the same business that owns the bar is the same business that owns the building

A business is going to get judged on its physical space regardless of ownership or fairness.

There's a bar in Amsterdam with a rather unique tap collection and a remarkably annoying location, but every time I mentioned it to one of my friends there neither of those things would come up - it was always some variation of "oh isn't that the one where you have to walk up a sketchy spiral staircase to use the toilet?"

[JohnTHaller]

If American, you're leaving out the factor that the bartender is likely paid below minimum wage by the establishment thanks to our tipped wages laws.

[JohnTHaller]

I think the disconnect may be if we're talking about an American bartender, they're likely getting paid below minimum wage (welcome to USA tipped wages) by the establishment. They have no power over the setup of the establishment and likely dislike both their boss and the customers. Source: I know a bunch of bartenders here in NYC.

[R0b0t1]

You can call EMS in such a situation if you can afford to wait. Fire and rescue usually will not bill you, and may find the proprietor at fault.

[WalterBright]

> it costs them money

The value calculus of something always seems to be heavily dependent on who gets the bill.

> even if it is in their own best interest.

I'm one of those people blessed with knowing what's best for other people, but I restrict my efforts to giving them unwanted advice. I don't care to force it on them.

[hobs]

Your comments are usually much more substantive. Using the sliding slope argument for wheelchair access makes you look like a right dick.

[ikiris]

When people tell you who they are, believe them the first time.

[derekp7]

A guy my Dad knew had a business, and the parking lot could hold about 4 cars (his, and 3 customers), all right in front of the door. He couldn't blacktop the lot, because if he did he'd have to paint a designated accessible-only parking spot, which actually would take up two spots. So he had to leave it as a gravel lot, which made it harder for wheelchair access.

It isn't that he was against accommodations, it just didn't make sense for that location where each spot was right by the door.

[letitbeirie]

Accessibility and building regs ironically combined to prevent a bookstore where I used to work from replacing a set of skinny, awkward, inward-opening doors which made the entire store a fire trap.

Why? Because state law required that any part of the building being modified be brought into compliance with modern building code. In this case:

- Replacing the doors with outward-opening doors would mean bringing the doorframe into compliance by widening it

- Widening the doorframe would mean widening the alcove into which it opens, and in a 19th-century masonry mid-rise every wall is structural

- Widening the door also means widening the short (3-4 steps) staircase leading up to it and bringing them into code by making them less steep

- Making the stairs less steep means they are now longer than the alcove and protrude beyond the property line onto the sidewalk

[WalterBright]

I read years ago that there was a minor industry of lawyers looking at satellite photos to find motels with a swimming pool, and then suing them for the pool not being ADA compliant.

The usual result was the pool got filled in, as it was too expensive to upgrade it.

Who came out ahead? Nobody but the lawyers.

[UncleMeat]

"Actually helping people is bad" is an extremely attractive narrative that sticks very effectively. It is regularly used to resist all manner of useful systems from welfare to charitable giving to accessibility.

"I read years ago that _nonspecific_thing_" should be a red flag for making broad judgements about the merits of accessibility. One story about "welfare queens" poisoned millions of people against anti-poverty measures for generations.

[WalterBright]

> should be a red flag

I'm sorry I don't have a photographic memory. But hey, a simple google search comes up with:

"In California, serial plaintiffs and their lawyers have found these cookie-cutter lawsuits to be lucrative as plaintiffs can claim statutory damages, compensatory damages, treble damages and attorneys’ fees."

https://hotellaw.jmbm.com/ada_defense_lawyer_pool_lift_l.htm...

[aww_dang]

Think of how much easier this process will be with websites. Just crawl and email legal threats. Lawyers will get paid again. Some tech people might even go along for the ride.

[pmontra]

Who did pay those lawyers?

[WalterBright]

The lawyers settled with the motels for $$$.

[glaucon]

I do not live in the USA so I'm woefully ignorant of US legal matters but how does a lawyer, having identified a breach of a federal law, then get a payment from the miscreant ? I mean the only way that comes to mind is to write to the offender saying "You're breaking the law but if you send me a cheque I won't tell anyone". For a lawyer in particular that doesn't strike me as a sustainable business activity !

So there's obviously something I'm missing here ... would you care to explain ?

[zamadatix]

The space being wider and the spaces being close to the door are two separate accommodations. Leaving it gravel leaves one solved (distance) and simply avoids the other (width) completely while ignoring that caused a 3rd (gravel if you do manage to get out). The guaranteed width is so there is a standard amount of space to exit the vehicle, see the drawing at https://www.ada.gov/restriping_parking/restriping2015.html

But yes it gets increasingly hard to have a good solution for everyone when there are so few spaces.

[Jiro]

Generally, if you're asking person X to spend money they don't want to spend, claiming that it's in their own best interest, it probably isn't.

[ClumsyPilot]

What is best interest is debatable, but we know for a fact that some people show no interested in survival of people around them - like drunk drivers.

Or like management of Grenfell tower in UK was asked to address fire safety problems, they didn't want to spend the money and about 100 people burned alive. Also the building is gone.

Or like that apartment block in US that collapsed recently.

Or like management of Bhopals fertiliser plant, that failed due to lack of maintenance and produced positions gasses that killed thousands of people, ofcourse starting woth employees of the plant. The CEO ofcourse escaped to US and US is refusing to extradite him.

In fact I don't know how to apply your advise to anything safety related, there are literally millions of examples of people saving a bit of money on safety and dying as a result and killing people around them.

[ikiris]

Hackernews: "Externalities happen to other people, now why are my gas prices so high?!"

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

You could say that about all of taxes.

[syshum]

>> some other boogeyman lawyer is after them

or you know there really could be... There is entire sub-group of lawyers that are ADA Trolls, just like there are Patent Trolls, and Copyright Trolls. They exist not to make business more accessible, but to line their pockets and make business hard for everyone, these lawyers give the ADA regulations a bad name and it a real and actual problem.

>>Vast majority of people want to completely ignore accommodation and absolutely hate being told to do the bare minimum for other people

Ummm no. That is not actually true. the problem is often times the regulations are inflexible, and unaccommodating themselves businesses are often put in position where they simply can not comply for some reason or another to every letter of very regulation (of which are vast, vague, and complex)

Business owners also do not like to be continually threatened with heavy fines, and government violence in order to operate their business.

>This site especially has a vocal block of libertarian leaning self centered privileged tech workers

it is very sad that we have come to the point where only authoritarian control via threat of violence are to be seen as the "acceptable" solution to a social problem. At one point the liberal solution was anti-violence now it seems the only acceptable solution for vocal block of ill-liberal self centered privileged tech workers is to use the power of government violence to force their will upon others believing in their own moral certitude that their world view is the "correct" one, and anyone that disagrees has to be selfish immoral bigot or uncaring capitalist scum, or other such thing......

Liberal solutions instead would be using other incentives to persuade people to voluntary solutions

[greenie_beans]

I just want to point out the juxapostion of this comment and the sibling comment where the commenter described their mobility issue and crawling up the stairs, in the context of the parent comment.

[syshum]

We do not know the full story of that comment. Remember all stories have 2 sides we only have one. Even taking the story at face value all we really know is the one employee of the bar was an asshole. Asshole exist in the world and no amount of regulations is going to change that, in fact the inverse is generally true in that more regulations simply create more assholes (i.e malicious compliance)

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

You don't have to restrict yourself to that comment, ask any physically disabled person they'll have a story of having to crawl or being trapped in an inaccessible space. The bartender is not the issue, the issue is the systemic lack of basic human dignity and access afforded to the disabled.

[ikiris]

Yep, if you look at their comment history, you can see it case in point. Rants about how fiat currency are the biggest fraud in history, etc. Every talk of government is using the phrase threats of violence.

Another one talking about the virtues of Trump government. Its kind of surreal in its divergence from reality.

[R0b0t1]

And what is your point? The practical effect of these ADA trolls is the complete shuttering of useful things that could not be made accessible in a reasonable fashion. E.g. universities have removed websites because they don't have the funding available to make the resources accessible. It's not trivial amounts of money, the case I was remembering was a court ordering the subtitling of years of video courses, ... or their removal.

I really feel for people with disabilities, but there's a heavy profit motive to abuse the ADA, and that's what causes people to hate it. There's other issues as well like rising costs of construction and doing anything productive due to red tape that are no doubt related, but what people see are the ADA trolls.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

If all that people see are the ADA trolls they need to spend more time looking at their disabled brothers and sisters.

At the end of the day the question is, are we content to let them crawl? Are we content for the public space to be segregated? Would we allow this for our family or ourselves?

If we consider these things unacceptable then we need regulations. Regulations come with drawbacks and avenues for abuse, all of them, but it shouldn't be the primary and prevalent focus when they're put into place to protect marginalized sections of society. In a healthy society, I would expect of a tech forum to mainly be discussing tech tips and methods to comply with these norms. The truth is people don't want to do the minimum work to help these people, western societies are incredibly individualist and every effort or capital spent on helping others is seen as personal injury. It's this mindset that makes it so even in new products and constructions, the simplest norms aren't applied. I think there needs to be a change of mindset, because the first thing that should come to people's minds when reading this article is the social good that will come of it, not the reactionary examples of abuse.

[seanmcdirmid]

The trolls are very visible and could eventually erode support for the ADA in the general public. This is true for any vulnerable population, actually. Asking people to ignore them never works well, there needs to be legislation work that specifically targets them so that the ADA doesn’t lose popularity.

[syshum]

>>because the first thing that should come to people's minds when reading this article is the social good that will come of it

Wishing does not make it so, and human psychology does not work that way and never will. if you continue to base your responses of this flawed view of reality you will continue to be disappointed.

One must plan for how humans actually are, you know reality, not how we wish things were. This is often the problem with regulations, economic policies, etc. People crafting them are crafting them for a population of people that does not actual exist, so they always fail

Humans are tribal, that tribe is generally viewed to max out at about 100 people or so, any group that is larger than that is going to be an abstract concept not something that can be held deeply personal. For a pure altruist motive that is the target, that is why local community groups are far more effective at charity than national programs, the people are more personally connected.

>>western societies are incredibly individualist

Through out history collectivist societies always fail because they are incompatible with human psychology. A collectivist society must stay small, it could never be the size of a city let alone a nation state. Individualist pursuits are the best way to organized large groups.

Collectivism works at a small, family or tribe level, not for a mass population

[R0b0t1]

I'm just telling you what a fair number of people think. Separate what I am telling you from what I may believe.

[ClumsyPilot]

'It's not trivial amounts of money, the case I was remembering was a court ordering the subtitling of years of video courses'

Why can't a university afford subtitles, this is not a tall order, its a job a part-time first year student could do.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Then go after ADA trolls, instead of advocating effectively that disabled people (26% of the population) should just accept dehumanization and utter humiliation through no fault of their own and that they cannot change simply because society considers it too expensive for them to have basic dignity.

[tomohawk]

The ADA is enforced by civil lawsuits. You can make a lot of money going around finding "violations" and suing over them. In the heyday of compliance for restaurants, a fair number of iconic restaurants in our area were put out of business by these lawsuits because they were in old buildings where it was just not possible to make accommodations. No rooms for ramps. No way to put in elevators. You get the idea.

This action may result in some benefits for those who need it, but the main beneficiaries will be law firms.

[Hnrobert42]

Is that true? I thought ADA compliance is like building code compliance. It is only enforced during changes. I would guess a lot the restaurants failed because lots of restaurants fail.

[sokoloff]

My city has published a guide on this topic.

> Americans with Disabilities Act

> First, the ADA requires all places of public accommodation, including retail businesses, to remove barriers to access whenever it is readily achievable to do so..

> "Readily achievable" means easily accomplishable, and able to be done without much difficulty or expense. This is an ongoing obligation, and is required even if you are not performing any renovations.

> In addition, if you are altering or renovating an existing building, the ADA also requires you to make the altered areas readily accessible to and usable by people with disabilities. The ADA also requires you provide an accessible route from the building entrance to the altered areas, so long as doing so does not result in disproportionate costs.

> "Disproportionate costs" are defined as those costs exceeding 20% of the overall cost of the alterations. For example, if you are spending $50,000 on alterations, under the ADA you may have to spend up to an additional S10,000 providing an accessible route.

https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Files/CDD/EconDev/Interi...

[bluGill]

Restaurants remodel all the time. Does replacing an old door trigger lots of other work?

[heavyset_go]

> Wondering if wheelchair users were hated back in the days when the law about wheelchair ramps was passed

They were. AM talk radio hosts would whine about that one for years.

[nfw2]

It is easy to make a basic web form, e-commerce site, or blog post accessible. But the web is largely becoming a space for arbitrarily-complex, fully-interactive applications. Today's web is full of products with:

- complex information architecture, with nuanced relationships between nodes communicated by position, spacing, boundaries and other visual cues

- real-time data updates that transform the document in arbitrarily complex ways

- screens where nearly every square inch is actionable, and these actions transform the document in arbitrarily complex ways

- controls that are not simply a button or text link, but regions full of structured content embedded within them.

- screens that respond to inputs in real-time in arbitrary complex ways

- rich graphics that eschew the traditional document model, with its established accessibility guidelines, altogether

To make such an application accessible requires:

1.) auditing all the visual cues, writing supplementary text if necessary, and adding the ARIA properties to communicate these cues

2.) communicating all document transformation to the user, either by navigating focus to the new content, or communicated to the user some other way. In the case of real-time updates, this also can't obstruct the normal usage of the site.

This is certainly possible at a small scale, but very hard to do consistently by an organization if engineers and designers on each product team don't have a solid understanding of how screen-readers work or the ARIA spec. It is also hard to have any quality control on this without having someone actually test every product on a screen reader.

Unfortunately, few engineers (and even fewer designers) have this expertise. Many years ago, I did a 12-week, 70-hour-a-week web development bootcamp, and, of those 800+ hours, exactly 0 hours and 0 minutes were spent on web accessibility. To be honest, I doubt the instructors even knew anything on the subject.

Sure, it would be easier to build an accessibility web by just simplifying product requirements. But I have had little-to-no success doing this as an IC engineer.

[ximm]

Turning an existing application into a accessible one is a huge issue, but only if it was built without accessibility in mind.

That is a bit like saying "todays applications do all sorts of potentially dangerous operations and need to be integrated with social media etc. Making all that secure is certainly possible at a small scale, but very hard to do consistently by an organization if engineers and designers on each product team don't have a solid understanding of IT security work or the OWASP top 10. It is also hard to have any quality control on this without having someone actually pen-testing every product."

Yes, accessibility is work. But not optional. If you build non-accessible websites you are just bad at your job.

[pavlov]

I agree with you. But we’ve had decades to get better at accessibility, and yet it’s practically mostly worse today than with desktop apps in 1999.

A forcing function is needed. Those wheelchair ramps didn’t get built because architects and real estate developers thought it was fun and interesting.

[nfw2]

I don't disagree, and I am not trying to argue that these laws aren't a good thing. But I'm also not sure the lawsuits are going to make a big difference.

My last company, despite facing an actual accessibility lawsuit, was willing to let all 3 of the engineers with the most accessibility expertise walk (including myself) rather than allow a long-term WFH policy.

[lhorie]

> Test accessibility with keyboard

One very simple step a dev can take is to just `tab` over their pages and check that important elements (links, buttons, etc) receive focus. Especially if they toggle something on the page via JS. If something doesn't, replace the div soup w/ a focusable element like `<a href="javascript:;"></a>`

For those saying accessibility is hard, doing just this one thing can make a big difference.

[Benjammer]

You don't even really need to replace the divs, just add tabIndex="0" on the things that should be focusable/tab-able.

[MrJohz]

This is mostly true, but it's usually better/easier to use the semantic element for any particular use case. In this case, for example, to correctly mimic how the <a> tag works, you'll need to handle both click events and keyboard events (e.g. space for clicking), and even then you'll struggle to handle right-clicks, ctrl-clicks or middle clicks in a way that is truly cross-platform.

The <a> tag, on the other hand, just does all that for you.

[ximm]

Bonus points: if you realize that you get annoyed from having to tab through the navigation every time, add a skip link at the beginning of the page.

[ConcernedCoder]

> Wondering if wheelchair users were hated back in the days when the law about wheelchair ramps was passed.

Not as far as I know, nobody I knew was hating on any disabled people, but laziness, procrastination, and the cost of accomodations was enough to prevent quite a few businesses from accomodating the disabled ( with ramps and such ) until they were legally forced to do it under penalty of law... And even today only businesses considered "public accommodations" are required to comply... that's it really not hate, just laziness.

[the_optimist]

How much of the nation’s wealth has been invested in this, and where has it not been invested? Make sure you count lawsuits, paperwork, planning, construction, maintenance, and enforcement. And try not to respond without pointing out something more wasteful, rather than something productive. Let’s pretend you took that money and invested it in advanced education for young black women in Chicago instead. What did we forgo?

[UncleMeat]

A system where we invest our money in only the maximally productive places is not a system that is just. Ensuring that people aren't left behind is a virtue and even if investing in people at the boundaries ends up leading to less society-wide productivity it is still valuable.

Your proposal falls prey to a sort of "investment-productivity monster." What if we identified the brightest kids in 2nd grade and spent all of our education resources on them, while shuffling the rest into the Amazon Fulfillment Centers? Maybe that'd increase overall productivity. But it'd be wrong.

[DocTomoe]

Your reasoning in itself is faulty: It pitches perceived good for one group ("young black women in Chicago") against perceived good of another group ("wheelchair users").

Let's for a moment disregard that there are a lot more wheelchair users than young black women in Chicago, and that the wheelchair users obviously are a lot more disadvantaged - a government is not a business. Its goal is not necessarily to use money "ideally beneficial" in a utilitarian way - its goal is to keep a society working, which in our liberal democracy environment means protecting the weak and keeping things relatively fair (in the sense: to help those who cannot help themselves).

While every young black woman from Chicago can stay in school, attend night school, or spend time in a library, not even the most athletic wheelchair-user can consistently hop their wheelchair (plus body-weight) up the stairs. And even if every single black young Chicago-woman becomes a new entrepreneur, resulting in a larger net-good for society as a whole, the wheelchair-user still would have the same problem.

[vangelis]

There's no guarantee it would be invented in that instead of a new jetski.

[the_optimist]

The reflexive, but non-engaged and and economically dishonest answer here is to avoid the question by comparing any investment to a write-off, this justifying anything. Nobody thinks like this looking forward, as it’s clearly nonsense. That’s why I proposed you not do this.

[vangelis]

Where's the incentive for business owners to invest in the latter instead of reinvesting the profits? I just don't see it.

[dawnerd]

I've always wondered but never really investigated... do screen readers handle css-only drop downs well? We've always avoided it and instead used javascript to toggle aria attributes which seems very backwards.

[runarberg]

I think it depends on the implantation. I think it is more important that your drop down is keyboard accessible. I usually expand my menus with ":focus-within" as well as ":hover" and make sure that one element which is always visible is also focusable. That way you can tab to it and the menu expands.

[cabalos]

Element visibility should not be triggered via focus or hover. Visibility states should be triggered with a button click or enter key press.

[runarberg]

Indeed, you should probably just use "<details>" and "<summary>" for drop downs today (works perfectly without any javascript and have accessibility built in). CSS only dropdowns were a hack for an era before these elements were widely supported.

[fortylove]

Thanks for your perspective here. Surprised at the pushback as well, on HN of all places.

[ikiris]

Why are you surprised at the pushback?

[asah]

Hey I'm curious: how's MS teams? Slack? Discord? Zulip (chat.zulip.org)?

[sixothree]

Yes. The ADA in the 1990s got huge push back from right wing America where it was widely and publicly derided.