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Lefty dentists and inclusive design
An article about the barriers faced by left-handed dentists, in what the article author, Robert Stribley, calls “a failure of inclusive design”. Robert’s dentist immediately “became a better dentist” after graduating dental school, as they were able to set up their working environment to best suit them.
Barriers occur in everyday situations:
The pen you have to sign things with at the bank is often positioned for right-handed people. The machines for swiping your subway card here in New York are exclusively positioned for right-handed people. And scissors? Ask left-handed people about scissors. When you’re left-handed, you realize how insensible it is for scissors to be designed exclusively for right-handed people. In fact, when I was living in Pusan, Korea in the mid-90s, I found that ambidextrous scissors were available everywhere, so I bought two pairs and still use them to this day.
Going back a few decades, children were literally punished for being left-handed, and were forced to write right-handed. Between the early 1900’s and 1960’s, the rate of left-handedness appeared to “increase” as it gradually became more accepted – but the proportion has almost certainly been constant throughout, it’s just that a large number of left-handed people had to suppress their instincts and learn to live right-handed.
Robert compares this to “the idea that transgender people have suddenly been materializing in our society, due to either being transgender becoming trendy or, worse, because (some critics posit) children being “groomed” by adults to be trans. Of course, the simpler answer is simply that transgender people are rising in numbers because they’re no longer being stigmatized to the degree that they once were”.
Robert, a creative director & “UXer”, amongst other things, concludes with this:
As we come to understand the diversity of our shared human experience then, we’re increasingly exposed to opportunities to develop more inclusive design practices. This applies across the whole spectrum of design, including the design of physical products and digital experiences.
There are both noble and practical reasons to practice inclusive design. And no good reasons not to.
When to use target=”_blank”
An old CSS-Tricks article by Chris Coyier, worth reading as a refresher.
The default value for the target attribute, if unspecified, is “_self”, meaning links open within the same window. Using “_blank” forces links to open in a new window or tab. Users can opt in to opening in new tabs by using CMD + Click when opening links, so they have the choice without being forced into any one decision.
Chris points out some bad reasons that have been used in the past to justify forcing links to open in new tabs:
- For branding, metrics and engagement. Opening new tabs means people still have your website on their original tab, keeping them on your site.
- Because internal and external links are different. Quite a few sites only open ‘external’ in a new tab.
- Because the link is to a PDF. Users can still use the back button, so why a new tab? (PS if you’re trying to make it easier to download, use a
downloadattribute on the link instead). - Because your client wants it that way. Chris suggests educating them about not frustrating their users.
- Because it’s an infinite scroll page (to avoid the issue of handling ‘back’ behaviour after a long scroll).
Chris then lists some good reasons for opening in new tabs:
- Because there is user-initiated media playing.
- Because the user is working on something that would be lost if the current page changed.
- Because there is a technologically obscure reason. Chris cites “building an email where people in Outlook Kangaroo 2009 Enterprise Edition need to open it but links need to have target=”blank” on them otherwise they open in the sidebar viewing panel”…!
Last but not least, don’t forget to add the rel="noopener" attribute when opening in new tabs, for security reasons. This is less relevant now we’re approaching 2023, but the article hasn’t been updated to remove that advice yet, so I’d err on the side of caution and keep doing it.
Linux Accessibility: an unmaintained Mess
Devin Prater shares his experiences of trying to use Linux as a blind person.
He reminisces about the days of Gnome 2 on Vinux, which was “accessible and easy to use” when used with Orca, the Linux GUI screen reader. Around 2015, Sonar came along, based on Antergos (Arch Linux). Both projects “are no more”, due to infighting when the two planned to merge.
With Vinux and Sonar abandoned, many blind Linux users moved to mainstream distributions, which vary in their accessibility. Devin shares tale after tale of the barriers he faces and overcomes, only to be faced with another barrier. I won’t reproduce it all here, but safe to say that even when doing everything right, Devin would need to enable settings on a per-app basis, find things were incompatible and that key processes would crash. If someone as technically competent as Devin faces these issues, other users have no hope.
Devin ends with a call to action, for the open source community to care enough about accessibility to “clean up the mess they started”. He was forced to reinstall Windows, and highlights how not being able to use Linux is impacting his ability to get a skilled, well-paid job. Devin points out that the blind community are the very people that stand to benefit most from gaining system administrator skills and so on, if the accessibility barriers can be overcome.
Setting up an Accessibility Book Club
Beverley Newing, Accessibility Lead at the Ministry of Justice Digital and Technology, describes how they set up an ‘Accessibility Book Club’.
The club helped Beverley to create accountability, to ensure they were setting aside time to read and hear about the experiences of disabled people. The club can read books, or watch films/documentaries/TV series, but the item has to be about (or written by) someone disabled, or be on the topic of disability.
Beverley suggests using an online location as a meeting point, e.g. Google Meet. Create a calendar placeholder and a series of questions to serve as discussion prompts. Finally, create a Slack poll (or similar) so that the next media item can be voted upon.
The author has open-sourced a “collection of resources to help run an accessibility book club”. The linked app is down at time of writing, but you can access the resources on GitHub.
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