As another totally blind developer I'm going to have to either assume that you are not experiencing much of the web, or that you are simply lying.
95% of the web is accessible if you know how to use a screen reader?
How about ...
Google Docs, Google Analytics, Adwords, Github Gists, anything with SVG in it, all the unlabeled flash, all the unicode icons which don't speak, all the unlabeled links, all the unfilled alt text tags...
Every single infographic,
all the popup menus or modal dialogs or popovers which pop up at the top or bottom of the screen reader's virtual buffers instead of gaining focus when you invoke them,
...
And then you have the stupid stuff. The JS library Github uses for tool tips renames the title attribute of links to original-title, which completely blows away the semantic meaning and means no screen reader is going to read it... But the clever author of the library got the right visuals so that certainly doesn't matter...
Google Instant invites me to turn off Google Instant, to work better with screen readers... Instead of simply making Google Instant work better with screen readers. This is an oft-repeated strategy -- can't spend an hour to make your content accessible for the blind? Give the blind a lesser version of your product and call it a day.
I'm quite frankly terrified when I hear people on this and other forums go on about how the web is eating the desktop, because the web as it currently stands is a dreadfully inaccessible place.
We must use different parts of the web then. I don’t use google docs, and if you really want an online word processor use the web version of Microsoft Word since they have made the effort to make it accessible. While it is not a good experience I was just able to create a gist, see
https://gist.github.com/jareds/8832236
Most of what I use the web for is online shopping, reading news, and technical documentation. This is generally accessible although I do agree that web apps like Gmail leave a lot to be desired. That is why I use Mail on OSX or the mail app on my iPhone. The popups are annoying but usable. If something doesn’t behave as expected then you should check the bottom of the page to see if something new appeared. I realize I am not an average blind computer user but in my case I will stand by my 95% comment. My 95% may be a lot higher than the average blind user though.
I'm quite frankly terrified when I hear people on this and other forums go on about how the web is eating the desktop, because the web as it currently stands is a dreadfully inaccessible place.
This article has been on HN before, and I think my comment from last time might be worth reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5023447