If I'm putting out a free app as a single developer, I don't have the time or money to do everything. If it becomes popular, I can use metrics to improve the accessibility situation.

If government regulations are going to insist I have to put that investment in day 1, I'll just take up badminton or something.

I disagree with this take, most app frameworks do accessibility mostly right out of the box, it's just most developers never enabled voice over in their life, so they keep modifying the UI and messing up accessibility out of ignorance.

It's not that hard, and if every developer spent an afternoon looking into things, they'd realize how easy it is to get it right if the team is aware of it.

I'd not mind if like developers need to go through security and privacy training, they'd also go through accessibility training. A little investment would go really far.

If it's something like a game with a 100% from scratch engine I wrote, there's nothing at all out of the box.

Is it something like a game with a 100% from scratch engine?

Sure, but I'm talking about Compose, Swift UI, Flutter, React Native, Ionic, etc, you know like how the majority of the apps are actually written.

They all handle accessibility well, you just need to remember adding labels to your icon buttons, and you are good to go. If you don't reinvent the wheel thinking your buttons are soooo different that it needs to be rewritten from scratch, things just work.

I mean, isn't that kind of a false dichotomy, though? There's plenty of middle ground between "no required support" and "must fully support on day one".

For example, the ADA doesn't require employers to accommodate disability needs until a business has 15 employees.

Bad analogy.

Preparing food unhygienically is bad for everyone at the picnic.

A more appropriate analogy is disallowing watermelon at the picnic because one person can't eat watermelon.

> Please go play badminton.

Love the irony of including this comment in a post about making your app inclusive

>> Please go play badminton.

> Love the irony of including this comment in a post about making your app inclusive

Why is that ironic? There's a broad gap between being unable to use an app due to a disability, and unwilling to write apps that will be usable to people with disabilities. One is an immutable characteristic of a person, and the other is a personal choice to be calous. Inclusivity doesn't mean you can't kick people out for being jerks.

And in this case, if I were to hire a developer for an app, and they were so dismissive of accessibility concerns, I would end their interview with abrupt and direct feedback and the law would be on my side.

If your co-worker is allergic to peanuts, are you going to moan that you're not allowed to bring in your famous peanut brittle? No. You're going to be sensible and realise that excluding people or risking them harm isn't nice.

And, yes, I'm with Popper. The "Paradox of tolerance" is real. It's OK to tell intolerant people that they're not welcome.

I honestly think that this is a good answer. If one doesn't want to do it right, they are better off doing something else.

Of course, culture is a huge factor. The US wasn't built on "regulation, or else", it was built on "if you can, do". This makes business boom, but makes other concerns, like welfare, an afterthought. And it's up to debate which system is better to exist in. People dislike the rules, until it ends up benefiting them.

The theory is that the companies would do it for the +14% growth from users with disabilities, the reality is that they'll spend the effort on other things instead, and that disabled users would suffer through it because they needed to use the website.

Has anyone cracked the nut of making accessible 3D modeling software?

I haven't found anything in that vein and I'm curious if anyone's working on it.

I wouldn't say "no company", there do exist companies that are run by kind, thoughtful people. Never large companies granted, it seems the heart in something gets replaced by MBA grad nonsense past a certain size, but they very well do exist, and there's probably more of them than there are large companies that would just as soon put us all in a meat grinder if it helped their margins.

It's part of why I've really tried to stay employed with smallish businesses, because they're more human.