Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
Agree with everything apart from the "You remind me some old folks that even today insist to support Internet Explorer" - we support IE back to IE9 due to the fact that disabled users who rely on screen readers often can't afford to update JAWS to the later versions and so are stuck on older browsers, some are even still using IE6-8 according to the most recent WebAim survey, but even I draw the line at supporting IE6,7 or 8!. You should at least support IE11 due to this fact (as 1 in 10 screen reader users still use it), even if it is a pain!
If you want to invest time and support IE8-10 then you or your team mates can do it, but Microsoft has officially ended support for IE8, IE9 and IE10 so NO; even users with dissabilities should update their systems and browsers to support latest standards.
I can agree just for supporting IE11 for now (maybe at least until next year) but not older version; is a much waste of resources and dev hours plus count the fact that these browsers need extra effort and time for proper accessibility features to work in the first place.
Is this really true? I am genuinely interested, as I've not run into this particular argument before. Personally I tend to use NVDA most of the time (for testing purposes) as surveys tend to put it as the most used (webaim.org/projects/screenreadersu... ) and it works on every browser across Windows. It being free for use is probably also what's contributed to its popularity.
Also, looking at the JAWS website, it doesn't appear to charge for upgrades.
I do believe the argument for supporting very old browsers/systems has to strike a balance. First, we must ask if that emoji is vitally important to the content? If it's not, why is it there at all, and can it be removed?
If we truly need it, then how much of our audience is likely to be affected by it not being there? Mac and Linux have support for emoji out of the box, and Windows has it with built-in updates (albeit non-essential) since Windows 7 (which is about 11 years old now). We could use this Twitter library, but then the cost is going to affect all of our users by increasing network traffic and decreasing performance. When you consider that even countries like USA have some areas with really poor Internet connections, that impact actually becomes much more noticeable (businessinsider.com/map-fastest-an... ).
Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
We could make the argument similar to @christoslitras
that "users should just use the latest tech" but there are loads of reasons why they don't (for example):-
cost (see below),
lack of technical expertise to know how to update - this one is the big one, just because we know our way around a computer does not mean that kids who drop out of school at 15 to pursue a trade and are technophobes know how to do things we assume to be simple.
OS restrictions (32 bit machine vs 64 bit machine is one that is starting to cause people issues as 32 bit support is reducing).
With regards to JAWS cost it depends entirely on what country you are in as they use a distributor model.
In the UK to upgrade from 2017 JAWS or earlier to 2020 JAWS would cost you £375 as a home user. If you need it for work expect to pay double for a commercial license (although with a bit of fiddling and patience you can get that paid for by the government).
This is why NVDA is so popular (as you mentioned, it's FREE!), and it is a great piece of kit, but JAWS is still better with some programmes etc.
It is also familiarity, if you have used JAWS for 10 years then you know the shortcuts, the speech patterns, idiosyncrasies etc. Forcing someone to use NVDA and a certain browser is like me asking you to start writing with your left hand if you are right handed (or vice versa) in order to use my service.
You could do it but it would take a lot of time and effort so I am sure you would just stick with your right hand and just go to someone else who will let you write with the hand you prefer. (Not my best analogy but hopefully you get the point!)
I agree on the balance, it frustrates me that I have to still support IE9 - but I blame Microsoft for the issues I have with IE9 not my end users.
We choose IE9+ (rather than IE8+ etc) as our support level as that supports modern HTML and most CSS and compiling your JavaScript to work in IE9 isn't difficult.
When I say support IE9 I am not talking about pixel perfection, we can live with layout quirks and certain features not working perfectly as long as the site is still usable and fully accessible.
Also we support IE9+ for E-commerce sites, for SAAS we support IE11+ due to not wanting to have to create our own frameworks. We do however ensure that older browsers have alternative ways of performing critical actions.
That is just my 2 cents and why we support that far back, everyone is different, I just think it makes commercial sense to support things people still use as when they can't use your website as you don't support them they will hopefully come to mine 😊.
If you have your own site statistics and you can see there is a quite percentage of IE users using your site/services, then you and your team can decide if it's worth the time and effort to support such obsolete and abandoned browsers.
According to gs.statcounter.com, IE (all versions) global share is 1.68% and it keeps falling. Also many companies like Google, Facebook and even Microsoft, have stopped supporting IE for all new releasde of some very popular frameworks like React, Angular, Blazor/.NET SPA and even VueJS.
It does not worth it, not only for the time you or your team spends on this, but also having your site/app downloading and loading several JS/CSS files for pollyfilling missing features for obsolete browsers is bad for the projects ecosystem, for the majority of end users, for devices and even for the environment.
Agreed. The place I work at currently does have to support some older browsers, but that's typically more for core functionality rather than aestheitcal items. If things look a bit different, that's acceptable.
I suppose one could attempt to detect support of the emoji being used in a web page and use a method like this to fill them in, but again, is it worth it?
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Agree with everything apart from the "You remind me some old folks that even today insist to support Internet Explorer" - we support IE back to IE9 due to the fact that disabled users who rely on screen readers often can't afford to update JAWS to the later versions and so are stuck on older browsers, some are even still using IE6-8 according to the most recent WebAim survey, but even I draw the line at supporting IE6,7 or 8!. You should at least support IE11 due to this fact (as 1 in 10 screen reader users still use it), even if it is a pain!
If you want to invest time and support IE8-10 then you or your team mates can do it, but Microsoft has officially ended support for IE8, IE9 and IE10 so NO; even users with dissabilities should update their systems and browsers to support latest standards.
I can agree just for supporting IE11 for now (maybe at least until next year) but not older version; is a much waste of resources and dev hours plus count the fact that these browsers need extra effort and time for proper accessibility features to work in the first place.
Is this really true? I am genuinely interested, as I've not run into this particular argument before. Personally I tend to use NVDA most of the time (for testing purposes) as surveys tend to put it as the most used (webaim.org/projects/screenreadersu... ) and it works on every browser across Windows. It being free for use is probably also what's contributed to its popularity.
Also, looking at the JAWS website, it doesn't appear to charge for upgrades.
I do believe the argument for supporting very old browsers/systems has to strike a balance. First, we must ask if that emoji is vitally important to the content? If it's not, why is it there at all, and can it be removed?
If we truly need it, then how much of our audience is likely to be affected by it not being there? Mac and Linux have support for emoji out of the box, and Windows has it with built-in updates (albeit non-essential) since Windows 7 (which is about 11 years old now). We could use this Twitter library, but then the cost is going to affect all of our users by increasing network traffic and decreasing performance. When you consider that even countries like USA have some areas with really poor Internet connections, that impact actually becomes much more noticeable (businessinsider.com/map-fastest-an... ).
Thanks for your comment!
@ashleyjsheridan Yes it is true.
We could make the argument similar to @christoslitras that "users should just use the latest tech" but there are loads of reasons why they don't (for example):-
With regards to JAWS cost it depends entirely on what country you are in as they use a distributor model.
In the UK to upgrade from 2017 JAWS or earlier to 2020 JAWS would cost you £375 as a home user. If you need it for work expect to pay double for a commercial license (although with a bit of fiddling and patience you can get that paid for by the government).
This is why NVDA is so popular (as you mentioned, it's FREE!), and it is a great piece of kit, but JAWS is still better with some programmes etc.
It is also familiarity, if you have used JAWS for 10 years then you know the shortcuts, the speech patterns, idiosyncrasies etc. Forcing someone to use NVDA and a certain browser is like me asking you to start writing with your left hand if you are right handed (or vice versa) in order to use my service.
You could do it but it would take a lot of time and effort so I am sure you would just stick with your right hand and just go to someone else who will let you write with the hand you prefer. (Not my best analogy but hopefully you get the point!)
I agree on the balance, it frustrates me that I have to still support IE9 - but I blame Microsoft for the issues I have with IE9 not my end users.
We choose IE9+ (rather than IE8+ etc) as our support level as that supports modern HTML and most CSS and compiling your JavaScript to work in IE9 isn't difficult.
When I say support IE9 I am not talking about pixel perfection, we can live with layout quirks and certain features not working perfectly as long as the site is still usable and fully accessible.
Also we support IE9+ for E-commerce sites, for SAAS we support IE11+ due to not wanting to have to create our own frameworks. We do however ensure that older browsers have alternative ways of performing critical actions.
That is just my 2 cents and why we support that far back, everyone is different, I just think it makes commercial sense to support things people still use as when they can't use your website as you don't support them they will hopefully come to mine 😊.
If you have your own site statistics and you can see there is a quite percentage of IE users using your site/services, then you and your team can decide if it's worth the time and effort to support such obsolete and abandoned browsers.
According to gs.statcounter.com, IE (all versions) global share is 1.68% and it keeps falling. Also many companies like Google, Facebook and even Microsoft, have stopped supporting IE for all new releasde of some very popular frameworks like React, Angular, Blazor/.NET SPA and even VueJS.
It does not worth it, not only for the time you or your team spends on this, but also having your site/app downloading and loading several JS/CSS files for pollyfilling missing features for obsolete browsers is bad for the projects ecosystem, for the majority of end users, for devices and even for the environment.
Agreed. The place I work at currently does have to support some older browsers, but that's typically more for core functionality rather than aestheitcal items. If things look a bit different, that's acceptable.
I suppose one could attempt to detect support of the emoji being used in a web page and use a method like this to fill them in, but again, is it worth it?