Comment by vunderba

I assume not, but the emphasis here is that a new tool is homogenizing these projects and due to its scale it is more important that this homogenous output is up to a higher standard.

A hundred self-thought devs not implementing accessibility standards is a different problem than a school teaching 100 students lacking these standards in its curriculum.

The "default" light-mode look of most popular UI frameworks wouldn't have that same issue unless you put a lot of time into customizing your own styling, which most side projects wouldn't bother with (unless that look and feel was the point of the project). There certainly would be poor UI decisions but more likely in layout/placement/navigation, which could still be problematic for accessibility but probably not in a "is this color scheme even readable" kind of way.

Plus given time constraints, they generally wouldn't try to cram huge amounts of tiny text into every visible inch of the page without some intentional reason to do so (using that somewhat hard to read console-ish font Claude seems to love as a default).

Maybe the dark mode/terminal font/high text density look presents as "cool looking" at first glance for one-shotting evals so they've all converged on it. But to OP's point, this seems like a solvable (or at least mitigable) issue if models or harnesses were concerned about it.

I could see that. I’ve found that the more specificity you add to your prompt and less freedom you give Claude Code to kind of just “do its own thing”, the better your results will be.

FWIW, there’s also an official frontend-design skill for CC [1]. A while back I incorporated some of the more relevant guidance from WCAG into it [2].

[1] - https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/blob/main/plugins/...

[2] - https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag

Something I've noticed when people complain about stuff like accessibility or other things that LLMs do "wrong", it really is a case of "you're holding it wrong." The LLM does indeed know how to do it right and it sometimes does so autonomously but when it doesn't, you can simply ask it to do so.

In other words, I've found people like the above to think of LLMs as fairly static, as if we couldn't change their behavior with a simple sentence, instead of complaining about it. It's strange, to me at least.

I use the W3 preliminary guidelines - you could try adapting them into a bespoke skill as a good start.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/preliminary

Another possibility (although I’ve never actually tried this myself) is an MCP server that someone built specifically to connect to Lighthouse, which includes accessibility testing as part of its benchmarks.

https://github.com/priyankark/lighthouse-mcp

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People assume that accessibility is all about some small minority of less abled people who can't "read good", but it's a broad category that affects all users. If you build following the guidelines then you end up with a quality product that can be used by people who stumbled upon it while doom-scrolling instead of enjoying their beach vacation. The best analogy I heard was about drop-kerbs/curb-cuts... people wonder why we're catering for a small minority of wheelchair users everywhere and then they have a kid (or wheel luggage from the airport) and realize how great they are.

> I find it bewildering that every thread sharing some project has a comment like this.

Those of us who care that technology be accessible to as many people as possible, such as low vision users, find it relevant. You can ignore it if you wish.

Just chiming in to say that the idea someone would "not care at all about accessibility" (and openly state as much) is bewildering to me.

> Just chiming in to say I don't care at all about accessibility

See Rawls 'Original Position' on why you should care: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

> chiming in to say I don't care at all about accessibility

I hope you remember that well into your adult life.

Your hearing may be lost. Even if you could still read, the website doesn't offer an accurate transcription. You have to rely on someone else (or some other tech) to transcribe. You have to hope their hearing and language skills are good enough for an accurate transcription.

Your vision may be lost. Even if you could still hear, the website doesn't offer an accurate transcription. You have to rely on someone else (or some other tech) to transcribe. You have to hope their reading comprehension and language skills are good enough for an accurate transcription.

Your limbs may be lost. Some apps let you tab around. Some apps make it impossible to find a button until you hover your mouse. Some apps simply don't load unless you press some magic keystrokes. Good luck.

You brought this problem upon yourself, 30 years ago. You brought this problem upon others. People won't care about your problems. Why should they, when you didn't care about theirs?

> I find it bewildering that every thread sharing some project has a comment like this.

Accessibility is legally required and not difficult to add.

Would you deny service to black people? Islamic people? Gay people? Refusing to provide accessibility in your service is no different. You are actively discriminating in a way which could be illegal and certainly is unethical and amoral.

I care about accessibility, but I agree with your sentiment. There is this recurring pattern people have when trying to detract from AI. They realize that saying they dislike AI for economic reasons is not going to garner any sympathy, so they try to hide behind some noble cause. At one point, it was about water use in datacenters. At another point, they become defenders for megacorporations' copyright. Now, they are trying the "AI doesn't cares about accessibility" angle. They are just trying to find some reason that sticks.

That's until you want to fill a form and find out it's dark grey text on a different dark grey background so you don't see what you're typing even with 20/20 sight :)

There's a whole industry around suing website owners who have websites that aren't accessible. It's kind of messed up. The WSJ did a story on it a while back: https://www.wsj.com/business/entrepreneurship/small-business...

Consider not being bewildered that people care about things you don't care about.

Accessibility is a broad umbrella of features that enable a ton of really cool stuff for everybody, not just the disabled. Things like agentic computer use is only possible because of "accessibility".

As they say, everyone will eventually become disabled in some form or fashion. When your eyes go due to old age you'll be glad to still be able to use the internet.

This seems very weirdly exclusionary to me. Don’t you care at all about the users trying to use your site?

TIL slibhb will be young forever

I find it bewildering that every thread sharing some project has a comment like this.

Because Western society functions for the common good. We are not animals fighting for survival in the wilderness.

And because a web site not being accessible is a liability. Target was sued and had to pay millions for having your attitude.

I'm blind and accessibility is important to me. It is extremely disrespectful to see someone who just says "fuck you" and feels good about it. Please, at least consider that the world is bigger than you imagine and there is place for everyone in it and there is no need to be purposefully rude.

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>stop shoving your wants

“Don’t have bad vision if you didn’t want to be technical!”

(came across that way)

That's a really terrible option for the vast majority of people who simply lack that kind of tech savviness to be able to do it. And in my opinion, it's kind of selfish.

It also doesn't solve the issue if somebody is browsing your site on a mobile phone where the extension might not even work properly.

WCAG is not difficult - but it does require some modicum of effort.

stop shoving your wants on others when you can fix it on your own. Just write a chrome plugin using ai that adjusts css to set contrast ratio of your choice. Can even use a local llm to figure out replacement colors.

Stop shoving your wants on others when you can fix it yourself.

Just get some concrete and some lumber, and build that wheelchair ramp.

You can even hire a contractor to follow you around town all day building them as needed.