When do you think about accessibility when you’re building products?

@n2o Agree here, firmly believe it should be at the very beginning of every thought process when it comes to product!

@n2o That is a really awesome example Christian! I'm curious — what drove the decision to distribute material as Markdown files?

@matt_sven The simplicity to write (for us) and browser compatibility to display everything as expected and having the possibility to use good screen readers for the students. In fact, we oftentimes use AsciiDoc, but the idea behind it is the same.

@bogomep Love this. Think the best mindset to be is to think of accessibility as the product itself, not just a feature that *we must consider* but rather as important as any other aspect that needs to be done prior to shipping

@lisadziuba Lisa, I'd be interested to know where "there" is for you? How do you think about that?

@antonio_fernandez_porrua Woah this sounds really interesting. Can you share an example of an API you've built and how it offers flexibility?

@matt_sven Good question. Because you find the flaw in my approach, I was not documenting any API at all, and I was not publishing that the API is available, so they have never really been public APIs. And you have made me realize that I was just justifying myself. I still believe the approach is good. I just need to start taking it seriously. As a first step, I am adding it to the backlog, and I will send you a message when I finish. Give me 2 weeks.

@matt_sven I'm not quite sure I've got it right, but It's a start: I think if creating APIs for accesibility becomes a thing, it needs to have some conventions or standars on at least where to find the basic information. Also I'm pretty sure I'm not the most qualified to come out with a propper standard and even lest to explain it right, (because I'm not english native) But here is my first naîve approach os such standarization for APIs for accesibility: https://github.com/hacknlove/API4H I choosed markdown over html because people can get too creative with html which can hurt accesibility of this basic information. Also I choosed markdown over text files, because markdown bring a normalized way to extructure the content. SO, the idea is to make this information accesible so the same people with needs the alternative UX can create themselves. ------ And this is my current proyect, where I have added for the first time an API for accesibility: https://www.exnge.com/ Following the proposed standard, anybody that wants to create an alternative user interface can try https://www.exnge.com/API4H/inde... to checkout if an API for accesibility is available, Then at https://www.exnge.com/API4H/vers... can see the versions availables In this case then he or she will go to the 1.0.0 version documentation https://www.exnge.com/api/API4H/... and will start creating his interface For instance using https://www.exnge.com/api/API4H/... to get the most relevant and updated market predictions. And that's it. Another thing I would like to add, working on these endpoints has helped my to improve the code quality.

@antonio_fernandez_porrua This is a really interesting idea! Can you share how you you imagine these alternative interfaces are built? Is it by the users needing more accessible interfaces themselves, hobbyists, software vendors, etc...?

@matt_sven I think empowering the final users that need the alternative interfaces is a must-have of any approach to bring accessibility this way. The process to bring accessibility should be accessible itself. I have once attended a conference of a blind developer and It was awesome how he works, the speed of the screen reader was way beyond my listening skills. I think the main limitation is not inside (the lack of capacity) but outside (The lack of APIs and documentation). Maybe in the real world, most of them would be done by associations and foundations, and in some cases, there could be a market opportunity for a startup to build its business around an alternative implementation of some successful product. Let's say, you can build an alternative tinder interface for blind people, but it's not a clone with no users, it's tinder. This could be a business. But I guess it requires some legal guarantees that tinder is not going to close the API and make its own adapted interface. Another scenario could be a Wikipedia alternative interface done by a ONCE And a change.org alternative interface could be done by an activist who happens to be blind.

@graeme_fulton Hi! What kinds of instances have you come across where the default accessibility of certain HTML tags and whatnot have let you down?

@matt_sven they don't let me down, it's extra work to add them. Like describing an image with an alt tag takes extra time, making sure the tab index is the right order, adding keyboard navigation to a dropdown menu - I have to do it all manually... Would be good if something could assist that part!

@graeme_fulton Do you have any thoughts about things that could make it feel more fun?

@matt_sven something scans all my missing alt tags, and gamifies it, giving me points for every accessibility fix I make, and then puts me in a leaderboard. Top accessbility warrior every month gets bonus points that can be traded in for Stark swag

@rosie_higgins_grapevine Hi Rosie! I peeked at your profile — is the product you're referring to Grapevine (which looks very cool, btw!) Voice transcription can be tough, but more and more platforms (Twitter, Slack, Zoom, etc.) are adding it. Were there any unique challenges you faced while building Grapevine's accessibility?

@matt_sven it is indeed :) thanks for the feedback! In terms of challenges, technically the whole app has been a challenge to build. Building 3D virtual worlds natively into the browser combined with audio streaming is not an easy feat 😅. Our biggest challenge is always getting people into the platform, once they're in it's very intuitive but that initial step is where we face the most issues. For example, dealing with connectivity and firewall issues from users in different parts of the world was a big problem for a while, and it's the type of platform where if one user can't connect then the entire group will switch somewhere else, so it really needs to work 99% of the time, luckily we've made great progress towards overcoming these problems over the last few months with the help of consistent user feedback.

@eudald_camprubi I'm interested to understand the concept of a 5 year old. Why that specific age? And can you say more about the limitation to just visual disability?

@imcatnoone what we work with when we focus on accessibility is working on color contrast size of fonts and follow as much as we can the standards of W3C standards. About the "5 years old" it was more a way to say, "we try to make things easy to understand" to everyone.

Hi @infr! I like your point about the fact that you're very much so losing out on customers by failing to consider accessibility in your product's design (15% is a lot, and that number goes up when you consider life stages we all cycle through!) One thing I think is important to consider is that there is a cost to deferring accessibility — not just in terms of the customers you lose out on, bu in terms of work that must be done to make an inaccessibly designed product accessible. The earlier the better!

@matt_sven absolutely if you have secured the funding for building the product and you know it has a lifecycle. But if you are a startup without real traction you should really focus on building your MVP with the emphasise on the minimum, nothing additional, only focusing on the customer value, you probably will scrap most of the product anyway. Of course if you are an experienced developer/designer making accessible software comes quite naturally and does not require that much extra effort. When you start seeing any traction you know that this is the product you should focus on, start then focusing on scalability and accessibility (and a lot of other things). Have Stark made any calculations how much additional effort accessibility will add to the development phase? I had to check out your product, I really liked the Chrome extension!

@jonathanm Curious to know why post beta phase and say not before?