I know it’s not a lot, but when I was doing some UI work on PCSX2, I tried the screen reader Orca on Linux to see what a blind person’s experience interacting with the UI was like. It was unusable. There was practically nothing. (Apparently on macOS it was kind of okay, but not because of anything the PCSX2 application was doing correctly.) It was staggering how terrible the experience was; even the tab ordering through the UI elements wasn’t enforced, so the element focus was like a game of connect-the-dots darting around the window. We weren’t using any – even trivial – accessibility functionality in Qt. To this day, I think most of that still needs to be done, as I only managed with my minimal knowledge to fix some low-hanging fruit (which would hopefully have at least helped a little).
What prompted me to try this? PS2 games are such a visual experience, after all. A fan replied to our Mastodon account saying that 1) he was totally blind from birth, 2) he loved playing PS2 games growing up, and 3) his favorite one was OutRun 2006 (yes, the high-speed racing game). This wasn’t a gag; he was visibly blind and detailed his experience. This wasn’t a one-off either; multiple users who note that they’re totally blind in their bio have followed the account. It really humanized something I’d conceptualized generically as something you should do because it’s a good thing to do. The most succinct way to put the lesson I was smacked in the face with was: “If you build it, they will come.”
That is, I know for sure that it’s not just a formality when I enforce it.
Thank you for having and enforcing this rule. It’s appreciated!
I know it’s not a lot, but when I was doing some UI work on PCSX2, I tried the screen reader Orca on Linux to see what a blind person’s experience interacting with the UI was like. It was unusable. There was practically nothing. (Apparently on macOS it was kind of okay, but not because of anything the PCSX2 application was doing correctly.) It was staggering how terrible the experience was; even the tab ordering through the UI elements wasn’t enforced, so the element focus was like a game of connect-the-dots darting around the window. We weren’t using any – even trivial – accessibility functionality in Qt. To this day, I think most of that still needs to be done, as I only managed with my minimal knowledge to fix some low-hanging fruit (which would hopefully have at least helped a little).
What prompted me to try this? PS2 games are such a visual experience, after all. A fan replied to our Mastodon account saying that 1) he was totally blind from birth, 2) he loved playing PS2 games growing up, and 3) his favorite one was OutRun 2006 (yes, the high-speed racing game). This wasn’t a gag; he was visibly blind and detailed his experience. This wasn’t a one-off either; multiple users who note that they’re totally blind in their bio have followed the account. It really humanized something I’d conceptualized generically as something you should do because it’s a good thing to do. The most succinct way to put the lesson I was smacked in the face with was: “If you build it, they will come.”
That is, I know for sure that it’s not just a formality when I enforce it.
I wish folks actually supported my endeavors.