> "The solution here is to augment our tools with the information a screen reader needs."
So we are in agreement that there should be different interfaces that suit each experience, we just disagree on the exact implementation details. I submit it's best to build entirely seperate experiences, but you submit it's enough to take the graphical-first experience and annotate it enough so that a screen-reader can generate an equivalent experience on the fly (using different kinds of annotation technologies). My response to this is:
1. Annotations and metadata (ARIA-labels, et-al) make it easier for the screen-reader to display relevant information in an accessible manner - but they create an unnecessary coupling between the visual-first frontend and the accessible frontend, when in reality they are built for different kinds of users.
2. Annotations are a decent starting point, but they are NOT a substitute for building an "accessibility-first" experience because they are too limited. You can't annotate a graph, or a progress bar, for example. But you could've built an entirely seperate experience which conveys the same data a graph would, in an accessible manner (given the right tools and frameworks).
So we are in agreement that there should be different interfaces that suit each experience, we just disagree on the exact implementation details. I submit it's best to build entirely seperate experiences, but you submit it's enough to take the graphical-first experience and annotate it enough so that a screen-reader can generate an equivalent experience on the fly (using different kinds of annotation technologies). My response to this is:
1. Annotations and metadata (ARIA-labels, et-al) make it easier for the screen-reader to display relevant information in an accessible manner - but they create an unnecessary coupling between the visual-first frontend and the accessible frontend, when in reality they are built for different kinds of users.
2. Annotations are a decent starting point, but they are NOT a substitute for building an "accessibility-first" experience because they are too limited. You can't annotate a graph, or a progress bar, for example. But you could've built an entirely seperate experience which conveys the same data a graph would, in an accessible manner (given the right tools and frameworks).