Re: I'm kind of concerned about the culture surrounding usability
Listen, I understand the importance of knowing how using a screen reader, but I don't think you understand the point I'm trying to make.
The screen reader is one point of the entire accessibility model. Screen readers themselves have very little to do with the problem with implementing accessibility in technology, outside of a few limitations they might have. Rather, the problem is implementation. This is NOT something that can be fixed by just learning how to study how to use a screen reader. Sure, it can help, but considering that my work has nothing to do with configuring UIs at the moment but rather developing audio navigation models and extending audio-game style accessibility into the mainstream, I would say that it is NOT worth my time at this moment in time.
The problem I tried to bring up with this thread is the fact that UX designers take advantage of the fact that currently, implementation of standards is not consistent and at a lower rate than eve r, so they have made a business model to capitalize on this, which may cause a serious monopolization as well as discourage further development. Furthermore, they don't challenge current standards that might actually contribute towards this implementation problem.
For example, because of the growing number of people who know how to program, it's far less likely that many foreign-built applications will have accessibility built in, due to different education standards.
How can learning how to use a screen reader actually help this situation? This is the question that you have to ask yourselves. While it might be personally appealing for me to understand what you might experience as a blind person, you should think more about what is actually helpful to the situation - as opposed to using precious time that I need to do fixing bugs, promoting my project and trying to build momentum for improving audio models in gaming - which has almost nothing to do with screen readers and represents uncharted territory outside of audiogames. People already can slap on a screen reader support for many games but that doesn't make them accessible. But actually making a model that commercially shows that it's possible? That would blow the movement in a completely different direction.
This is comparable to having a project manager learn how to code because it's important to the project. However, it's not their role to program, so they are effectively wasting their time - despite the fact that it might make them slightly more capable at their job. The "harm" that you claim doesn't exist comes from the waste of time resources that I could be using to make a project that blows people's faces off from how professionally made it is. The "benefit" is meager since I wouldn't even be affecting how screen readers work, nor would building a project that focuses on a screen reader particularly impress many peop le.
You say it would require a few hours at most to configure and learn, but this does not take into account the fact that 1) techinical issues may arise that may easily increase this time, and 2) most blind people do receive some training on how to use one, thus reducing the time YOU might need to learn how to use one. Even outside of that, a few hours can easily eat up most of a day of development time, which I have been trying to get almost every inch out of in the last few weeks after interest in the project has grown. Before you say it, the discussion here at least provides me useful insight. Finally, I do not agree that a few hours is all that's needed to grow proficient since I have used NVDA for over 10 hours and clearly that wasn't enough. If you're implying I should use it for a few hours a day until I grow proficient, you clearly have no idea how tight my current time schedule is, nor why I'm pushing 70 hours a week to begin with.
That' ;s not to say that I shouldn't ever sit down to work with one. Indeed part of the reason why I got involved was because I would like to use one in the future, but software that I use is not compatible and screen readers slow down my production time so much that I'm not able to efficiently keep on schedule - something that I think probably affects blind utilitization as well. I recently found out that some of my visual issues are caused by serious chronic migraine aura that makes it difficult for me to stare a a computer for hours on end - something that a screen reader interface and more intuitive design would definitely allow me to benefit from. Hell, my entire motivation hinges on this personal problem.
I'm not sure where the implication where "I will never learn how to use a screenreader" is coming from. I'm currently trying to promote a game that is intended to get my foot in the door as well as completely override the excuses of only implemen ting bare-bones accessibility tacked on into a project. The problem is that people just think, oh, if I have a screen reader read it, I'm good. So no, I disagree, me taking the time to learn how to use a screen reader would actually be detrimental to my progress at this point. I think a more appropriate time would be once I have established myself after releasing this title, which is expected in 2020. After all, if I'm funded, what else am I going to be doing other than developing this game?
And yes I've also used talkback before. Much more than NVDA to be honest. I would say that I have used it enough to say that I can comment on it - It's a huge pain in the ass. I don't like how it locks on stuff so much. It makes it feel clunky and slow. And a lot of apps dont' work well with it.
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