Who cares about the “feelings and difficulty” of the developers? This isn’t a niche side project they’re building for free on nights and weekends. They’re being paid handsomely by a multi-billion dollar corporation selling the software for profit.

And let’s be clear about what’s happening. The trade off isn’t about security. I’m sure you’re right that it’s not trivial, but problem is entirely solvable — it just costs money. Cloudflare has decided that accommodating visually impaired users is less important than their profit margins on this thing.

But I can also see how you feel like the feelings of accessibility users are not being cared about by this decision...but I encourage you to take a step back and see things in less absolute terms because I...think the situation has a lot of nuance which when appreciated changes the the way you'd be likely to choose if you are in charge of this.

[i edited out a whole bunch of stuff in the middle...go here, if you wanna see it: https://pastebin.com/YkcRgFFz]

Also in this specific category consider the idea that the isolation model is perforated by the need for accessibility so while you think you're getting simply a gain for accessibility users by opening the product up to be used by them you may be doing so in such a way that weakens the security model not only for all the other users, but for accessibility users as well... So, technically, or logically.. it very much is a trade-off about security, as much as you may wish to deny. I think if you weren't thinking in such absolute terms but more acquainted with the nuance of this technology you might see that as well.

but hey i could be misreading you in my own strident and stupid way, so i'm sorry if that's the case and it's possible i haven't yet considered the nuance of your view and feelings on this.

Disabled people have a valuable contribution to make and their voice should be heard. They should have access. But this good cause is often misused by people using it as a fake pretext for abusing others under the delusion they are absolutely right, and persecuting anyone who disagrees as absolutely wrong. This it is correct to prioritize feelings over bullshit is part of this. It's ape brain shit of trying to dominate others with criticism and control, and pretend they're holy warriors. That attitude is a contributor to why I'm so scared to engage with people about this topic. It's also sad for disabled people because these abusive crusaders give the cause a bad name, and generate counter productive resistance all for the sake of their own compensatory ego gyrations.

But separating out how the topic is misused by some looking to criticize or control others...there is a real issue here and and it's an important and good cause. But the solutions posited, often by the same folks, are not I think the best technical solutions, they're not scalable or efficient. Asking every website to provide hints might be OK at a small scale, but at internet scale it doesn't work. I think the right solution is to direct AI at the problem and have these accessibility directives generated automatically. Intelligent accessibility is a feature that should be present in browsers (or screen readers) by way of AI. People who care about the topic and want change should get to work on that.

You said the tone of my article was strident and demanding. Please note that it was addressed to the leader of a growing public company, calling on the company to live up to their own PR about their mission. I wouldn't take that tone with a solo developer like you. Even so, I don't believe I was abusive or persecuting. Still, it's likely that writing and promoting this article did make some part of my ape brain feel good about fighting for a righteous cause. So thanks for making me stop and think.

I don't think we can give up on accessibility standards but I'm really no expert. I think there's a good analogy between how you know commercial buildings need to have accessibility affordances like wheelchair ramps. And I think in that space it really works for number of reasons. Again I'm no expert in how this comes about but when you have a critical mass of standards in the construction industry and like a permitting process and an approval process where buildings are constructed only if they conform with you know standards which include accessibility then I think you can ensure, and there's sort of an expectation, that you get these affordances and then I think the marginal cost of adding this stuff when everybody in the supply chain, architects and so on, already conforms to this cost is very small for buildings... so I think that's the right allocation of cost in this case because it's efficient. Like I'm not even sure if accessibility ramps are such a great solution for disabled people but they seem to be addressing the opportunity to enhance access and they are pretty prevalent at least in developed countries. I think it's a better solution than asking every disabled person to have some special sort of wheelchair that can climb up stairs or some kind of intelligent wheelchair. Because I think in that case the cost of providing such technology to all these people right now with the technological landscape we have with consumers, it doesn't make sense, it's too expensive. It's more efficient and scalable to have building people include this stuff.

But I think accessibility doesn't have that critical mass across the supply chain of software and it is more expensive to include but on the other hand right now there's not really a good alternative on the sort of disabled consumer technology side there is no AI solution that can do this. I think a hybrid approach might work but I do think we need to look at like the AI side of having some sort of intelligent user agent that can provide the successibility information and at least have a discussion with that context that there are other options worth exploring. I think that shifts the discussion at least in appearance away from ideology and towards a solutions focus. and then maybe the sense will be cultivated that some of the resistance to including accessibility is not an ideological thing and not because people are uncaring about disabled people, it might become seen to be partly because there's a sense that this is not like a technical solution that smells good in some ways.

Anyway I'm not an expert but thanks for engaging and I'm humbled and grateful for your response here.

This product is not doing that to them, anymore than the visual world, and every image on the internet that isn't captioned in every detail is doing that to them. So don't pretend that it's somehow our fault that o people are blind.

That's important. There are important issues here but too often i see people misusing the cause of disabled people as a fake pretext to abuse others, while pretending they're being righteous, by criticizing and trying to control others, driven by their own need to put others down and feel better than them, thinking they're found a legitimate way to perpetrate their abuse. But they haven't.

And that's why I'm really scared of talking with people about this because so many get caught up in that game. Especially worse when they say oh let's not care about the feelings of the developers. Because that's exactly what they intend to do... be abusive and then pretend they're righteous while disguising themselves in the cause of supporting disabled people. well they're actually hurting disabled people by proposing these ineffective solutions and poisoning the discussion about this rather than trying to constructively support effective solutions. so what I'm trying to do with this statement is bring it's important topic back from being this excuse for toxic behavior. That's not a respectful or a good use of this topic at all.

But separating that out, disabled people have a valuable contribution to make and their voice should be heard and they should have access. So there are important problems that need solutions but the solution proposed by a lot of these people being abusive is oh let's get every vendor to alter everything they do to make it conform to this standard...and agree the case of buildings it's important to have a disabled ramp or something... but in the case of software that's not a scalable solution. And it doesn't respect the developers. I think the better solution is something like a browser extension and I think the ultimate solution is to leverage The power of AI to direct that ability to create the accessibility trees and so on from websites without needing annotations surely that should be possible and I think that is the ultimate solution and you're only doing disabled people a disservice by focusing on these you know ineffective solutions when there are technologically much better and much more scalable and effective ones and then you're only doing developers or disservice by having this abusive attitude.

I'm not saying you were exactly doing that but I did detect that antagonism so it seems like you could get caught up in that too but I'm making a larger point about a dynamic that I see in these types of discussions.

so the short way of saying it is it's a really important topic so the most effective way to deal with that is to respect the developers, respectfully engage The stakeholders and try to leverage the most effective technology not to misuse the topic itself as an excuse to be abusive because you feel you need to do that.

Tho I can say that, relevant to your idea, at least, in my RBI product[0], you can click somewhere in the viewport and say "Copy text" and then you get a HTML dialog open over the canvas viewport with the text. A screen-reader could potentially then read that.

But I think actual accessibility tools need to do so much more...Forgive me, I'm no expert in them.

Re the above tho, I don't see that as introducing a greater attack surface (tho I might be wrong) because on the server side we're just getting the innerText of the element the client clicked on, and sending that text back encoded in base64 (IIRC).

[0]: https://github.com/i5ik/ViewFinder

Screen readers do more, but they are not rocket science. I am no expert either, but I've worked on adding accessibility to a project that had none. Screen readers have proactive & interactive modes. In proactive mode, they read whats visible on the page, perhaps just the high-level components, giving a lay of the land. In interactive mode, it gives more detail on the control/item that currently has focus and the actions available (follow link, expand/collapse section, etc), and one would tab to move focus between controls.

I'm no expert on RBI, but I looked at your product and it appears to respond in real time to user interaction (hover over elements), perhaps what is missing is a standardized way to integrate Screen readers this "streaming" information; most accessible sites have plain-text ARIA tags/attributes meant for screen readers (with fall backs to 'title' or 'alt'[1]). However, this is just plain text, so sending text to the client adds an attack surface, but not a very large one, IMO.

I believe every developer who makes user-facing software should be forced to sit down and use their app/site with the monitor off, interacting with just the screen reader in their headphones. www.a11yproject.com has really good information on how accessibility ('a11y') works, and how to implement it correctly on the web.

1. I'm simplifying by a lot here -screen readers do a lot of heavy lifting, especially for sites/software not designed with accessibility in mind

It's a really important problem, and a good cause. Disabled people, for example blind people, have an awesome contribution to make to society and we need their voices to be heard, so to speak. In other words, we need their contributions to be made. They must have access. But the question is how to go about solving that?

I think the posed solutions of getting every website to adopt a certain standard is not a good technical solution. I think pointing AI at the problem and working out how to parse accessibility hints, possibly in a personalized and contextual way relevant to the particular person as well, is one approach to the solution that's better.

This part,

I believe every developer who makes user-facing software should be forced to sit down and use their app/site with the monitor off, interacting with just the screen reader in their headphones

No, just no. I appreciate the desire to do good, but I think your attitude here is in danger of falling into the trap in this topic of being abusive to others under the mere guise of a "righteous cause" -- and in the process hurting the very cause you pretend to stand for. The misuse of this issue by some bully-like people who want to abuse others by trying to dominate them with criticism and control is one reason I'm so scared to engage with this topic. They use the seriousness of the issue as a fake pretext to case the world in their own self-serving and ego-serving view of good vs bad, and go nuclear on anyone who disagrees with their stance. But this is just ape brain shit of bullying for compensation to make themselves feel better by pretending others are worse....Just avoid that.

There is a serious issue here, and a good cause. And any statement that seeks to coerce or force or minimize the feelings of any group of people, who could just be working together on a solution, don't get suckered by the delusion that such things are somehow the right way, they're not. They're just people being bullies because their lives suck, and they take it out on others instead of fixing their own stuff. These abusive misusers of the issue give disabled people a bad name, and hinder the very cause they are pretending to stand for by, among other things, creating unnecessary friction to collaboration, and pushback.

If you care about this topic, maybe you can do some AI work on it.

Joke aside, you are 100% right.