[seanbehan]

Show me a virtual machine that I can test with, that puts me in the shoes of a user w/ a disability, and I'll develop with accessibility in mind.

But the inability to replicate the experience in full, I think , inhibits catering to that demographic.

[krschultz]

That's a strawman.

Making a web site or mobile application accessible is about making it parseable to the accessibility application that the user with disability has installed on their machine. A text to speech app needs to be able to access all the content. Put the right tags on fields. Add alt tags on images.

On Android, the Lint tool actually calls these things out. I have no idea what it feels like to use a screen reader, but I spent the time to actually put in those tags to enable it for the users of the app. It doesn't take long.

[nailer]

> Show me a virtual machine that I can test with

>> Making a web site or mobile application accessible is about making it parseable to the accessibility application that the user with disability has installed on their machine.

He wants access to a VM (or many VMs) with the accessibility application that the user with disability has installed

That doesn't sound like a straw man at all.

[krschultz]

"But the inability to replicate the experience in full, I think , inhibits catering to that demographic."

That makes me think of trying to see what it feels like to be inaccessible user, I'm picturing a VM that makes the screen fuzzy or something.

If all you want is a VM with the tools installed - that's pretty simple. I imagine every developer can make a VM with an OS in it, and there are plenty of free accessibility tools available for the OS of your choice: http://usabilitygeek.com/10-free-screen-reader-blind-visuall...

[furyg3]

Yes, outdated browsers is the devil that developers know.

We hackers are frequently solution driven, with a heavy focus on tools. This quickly tailspins into goals focused on incremental changes (load faster, show more info, integrate with this other thing) instead of stepping back and looking at the larger picture (who are my users and what do they want to do?)

Fighting for 3 hours to get your graph to load properly on IE7/8/9 is silly if a table displays the information more clearly and is more accessible.

[seanbehan]

I think this would make a good product. Browserstack for different types of disabilities.

[CJefferson]

If you are on a mac:

1) Press apple+F5

2) Click 'Learn voiceover' and go through the short tutorial.

3) Open safari, go to your website, close eyes.

[lilsunnybee]

Even if you had a virtual machine with accessibility tools on it, it wouldn't mean you'd end up using it like someone would if they've been using these tools for years. The article is just pointing out the exact sort of industry-wide ignorance of and ignoring of accessibility standards and best practices that you're experiencing, and calling for something to be done about it.

[didgeoridoo]

Try the NoCoffee extension for Chrome. Great for simulating a wide range of visual difficulties.