Show HN: 92% of US city websites fail ADA accessibility

Discussion (8 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

MisterTea•about 2 hours ago

Title should have ADA in all caps as Ada is a given name. I see the opposite all too often when talking about the programming language Ada where people type ADA which can stand for the American Dental Association or Americans with Disabilities Act.

anonymousiam•about 1 hour ago

I expect the 92% number to rise as the number of anti-AI scraping measures and CAPTCHAs that are not compatible with assistive technologies continues to rise.

https://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/

a11ymaster•about 1 hour ago

That's a good point. It wouldn't be the first time security measures created accessibility problems. CAPTCHAs are a classic example. As organizations roll out more anti-scraping and bot-detection mechanisms, there's definitely a risk of introducing new barriers if accessibility isn't part of the design process from the start. The ideal outcome is being able to stop abuse without making life harder for legitimate users. I see a good number of scans from accesslumens also gets blocked because of anti-scraping and bot detection which is a good measure in this case

romellem•about 1 hour ago

These are interesting results, but it reeks of LLM output. [ You made an interesting thing, why not describe it in your own words? I already read this all day.][1]

[1]: https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov/post/3mpyd3esthc2m

a11ymaster•about 1 hour ago

Fair call. The research and analysis are mine, but I did use AI to help clean up and structure parts of the write-up. The writing could use more of my voice, I'll own that. Appreciate the feedback

willmeyers•about 2 hours ago

I had to sift through a bunch of different state agency websites before Covid for a job. Most of these websites are nightmares when trying to find information or fill out a form. I can't imagine trying to navigate these sites by yourself with a disability. Honestly, if you're hosting a website on a .gov domain, you should be required to use USWDS (https://designsystem.digital.gov) or something equivalent.

randyrand•about 1 hour ago

The tools used by the blind changed a lot in the past 3 years. The era of needing specific ADA accommodations for the blind is probably already over, if challenged in court.

PaulKeeble•about 1 hour ago

Honestly most of the world is inaccessible by design even the new things. Most people just don't think about the disabled at all and if they do its to talk about what they need and not actually to ask them what they need and include them. Ableism is the most prevalent and accepted bigotry in the world. There is also no movement to really fix this in the modern age, if anything its getting worse in a lot of places.

Show HN: 92% of US city websites fail ADA accessibility

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (8 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews