EDIT: this also supports the "bridge everything to IRC/Matrix/..." approach, since it lets people use whatever setup they already have working for their specific needs. And if Discord kills our bridge one day because "evil bot", well, rest of the group still works. And if something new and shiny comes up, sure, bridge it.
Discord gets a lot of complaints but they seem focused on chasing their success metrics to the absolute exclusion of everything else. Those complaints don't register in their chosen and still upward trending metrics, therefore they don't matter. It doesn't matter that a significant part of Discord's growth is backed by users benefiting from bots which will be broken by the upcoming API changes, it doesn't matter that their developer relations are so bad that major developers are abandoning their projects instead of updating to the new API, all of this doesn't matter as it isn't being measured by their success metrics.
this dev refuse to consider accessibility as it means ui changes or new option. users with visual impair are unable to use app and dev just locks issue reported for it and ignores users. probably to boost number of dls/markerting.
even if user does a patch dev just closes and does his own thing that dont help. even foss projects kick contribs out for try to help
I am not sure where you believe that more users == more time given to accessibility features.
Open Source on the other hand is development driven by need, thus if an an open source software does not do what I need, I can modify to do that thing. This allows a small niche of users to adapt the software to meet their particular accessibility needs, or for a charity to pay a developer to do so, neither of which is possible with close source software. So at the end of the day people that need or want accessibility features have to shame the closed source companies into doing it, or have regulations passed that require it, both of which will result in just enough development time to either cover the regulations, or the bad PR, and likely will result in a subpar experience to that of Open Source (IMO)
Perceptive readers might have noticed that most of these
arguments can be generalized. This article is much the same
if we replace “Discord” with “GitHub”, for instance, or “
Twitter” or “YouTube”.
The author takes it for granted that accessibility issues are more prevalent in proprietary software like Discord (vs FOSS alternatives), is there any evidence to back this up? I ask because it seems counter-intuitive. Since most proprietary software in this space tend to have more users than their FOSS counterparts, it seems pretty straightforward to think that accessibility will be less of an issue in the former category (i.e., more users = taking into account and addressing more accessibility needs vs when you only have a few thousand users).
Maybe the logic is being open source encourages volunteers to address accessibility issues and submit patches? Although even that's debatable; unless the project is quite popular, there will always be shortage of volunteers.