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Number of posts in this thread: 8 (In chronological order)

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Thu, Aug 01 2013 5:04PM
Subject: Making Bootstrap more accessible...
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Hey all,

I've seen that recently there's been some discussion here about some
shortcomings in Bootstrap, a general feeling that the Bootstrap folks
aren't particularly interested in accessibility, and what the community
could do to fix this...

From my own experience, the Bootstrap maintainers are no different from
the majority of developers out there: they often lack the interest, time
and knowledge to commit to accessibility. But, particularly as Bootstrap
is open source and on github, one thing that they ARE receptive to are
good pull requests to the project.

At the risk of sounding patronising or obvious, it's not enough to
simply point out the flaws, or to go off and construct separate
versions/demos of how Bootstrap should be changed [1] - because this
will require the core maintainers to go off and first understand the
issues, unpack whatever the fixes from the demos are, and work out how
to integrate these changes into their code base. In an ideal world of
course they would...but that requires time and effort on their part.

It's a cliche' of open source to counter any complaint about problems
with "where's the patch?", but in my own experience [2] I found that the
one thing that developers are happy to act on are well-constructed pull
requests to the original code, which follow their conventions, don't
introduce any regressions, and can simply be auto-merged in github
without them needing to do any additional work.

Certainly, not everybody's technical enough to provide a fully-formed
patch...but for those who CAN, this seems to be the route that makes it
far more likely to get fixes/changes done upstream (and yes, once you
have a good pull request, it of course won't hurt to lobby for it a bit
on twitter etc to core maintainers like Mark https://twitter.com/mdo)

Anyway, I'll take off my captain obvious cape now. Just wanted to throw
this one out there, as I've been discussing this with a few folks
recently...

P

[1] https://github.com/mpnkhan/BootStrapExamples/issues/1
[2] https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/6441

--
Patrick H. Lauke

From: Elle Waters
Date: Thu, Aug 01 2013 6:19PM
Subject: Re: Making Bootstrap more accessible...
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Patrick:

Please add our team to any discussions or plans. We have been having similar talks with others in the accessibility community and some of our clients. We'd love to participate in a Bootstrap a11y-a-thon to pool our resources and improve the framework.

Cheers,
Elle (Simply Accessible)

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Thu, Aug 01 2013 6:39PM
Subject: Re: Making Bootstrap more accessible...
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On 02/08/2013 01:19, Elle Waters wrote:
> Please add our team to any discussions or plans. We have been having
> similar talks with others in the accessibility community and some of
> our clients. We'd love to participate in a Bootstrap a11y-a-thon to
> pool our resources and improve the framework.

Great idea, but to be clear: I was not proposing a concerted effort
myself...I was merely putting out an obvious reminder that rather than
asking Bootstrap devs to "make it more accessible" (in vague terms) or
to go off and make demos of changes that can't be immediately pulled in
upstream by the devs without extra work, is not the most likely approach
to get fixes in.

Instead, fork the Bootstrap github repo, study their contribution
requirements (and yes, they're a pain, as you'll need to have a whole
build environment with node.js etc), make appropriate patches, and then
pull-request them back.

Also, don't be afraid to just make tiny changes - it doesn't have to be
one giant code dump that touches every single file. In fact, small,
focussed changes are likely to be more easily merged, as they'll require
less testing for regression or unforeseen side effects on the part of
the maintainers. My example of mostly doubling-up :hover styles to also
act on :focus was trivial enough...but was merged in very quickly
because of its simplicity. Tiny incremental changes, rather than one big
rewrite...

From: Greg Gamble
Date: Fri, Aug 02 2013 9:34AM
Subject: Re: Making Bootstrap more accessible...
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" From my own experience, the Bootstrap maintainers are no different from the majority of developers out there: they often lack the interest, time and knowledge to commit to accessibility."



I don't think that’s a good assessment of the TW Bootstrap originators, Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton. They have a different idea of how things should be done is all. A good example is the alert colors and any text in them. They don't pass a contrast check, and they know that. But they are using stoplight functionality ... red is error, yellow is a warning and green is ok. Any Text is just extra information, that is not needed to get the point across.



Some more info on the stop light idea:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa511283.aspx

" That said, the interpretation of red, yellow, and green for status is consistent globally. This is due to the UNESCO Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, which defines the worldwide convention for traffic lights (where red means stop, green means proceed, and yellow means proceed with caution). You can use these status colors without concern for culturally dependent interpretations."



Any framework is going to require work to be not only pleasing to the eyes, but accessible to those who need it. TW Bootstrap is probably the best of them all, It’s not perfect, but requires less work than most. JMO …



Greg

From: Jennifer Sutton
Date: Fri, Aug 02 2013 10:18AM
Subject: Re: Making Bootstrap more accessible...
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Greg and Patrick, along with any others who may be following this thread:

While you've made your relatively positive remarks here on list
several times, Greg, there are plenty of other people, both on and
off list, who have found some real issues, but perhaps they don't
impact what you're building.

Patrick, while I appreciate your points, I think the people on and
off this list, with whom I've communicated, aren't the code guru that
you are. If we were, we'd not be trying to talk about this with
others on Twitter and on the list (to try to coordinate an effort);
we'd be doing exactly as you suggest. I noticed your acknowledgement
that not everyone is a coder, and I do appreciate that.

The problem that I see, here (and that I'm experiencing), is that the
people with whom I work are having to spend their time figuring out
how to fix Bootstrap, which limits their time to contribute back to
the community. It seems a bit of a vicious cycle to me, but I suppose
that is how it goes in the land of open source.

I'll close by providing this link, in case somebody has time to parse
these into pull requests, in smaller "chunks," as Patrick suggests.
Thanks, Maraikayar Prem (Nawaz), for jumpstarting the effort. Now
that Bootstrap 3 is out, maybe accessibility can move up the priority ladder:

See:
http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/javascript.html

I'll continue to do my own part to encourage those with whom I'm
working to contribute back if they can find the time; I'll cross my
fingers that they'll already have the environment set up in order to do so.

Thanks to any who have time to dig in and get this very widespread
framework to incorporate accessibility into its core, both in terms
of code and philosophy.

Best,
Jennifer

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Fri, Aug 02 2013 10:36AM
Subject: Re: Making Bootstrap more accessible...
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On 02/08/2013 16:34, Greg Gamble wrote:
> I don't think that’s a good assessment of the TW Bootstrap
> originators,

I was only paraphrasing some of the concerns others have previously
raised about difficulties in getting accessibility into the agenda of
big frameworks. As I said, my own experience has been nothing but
positive, but nonetheless I posit that it is because what I pushed for
was in easily-committable format already, rather than just being a
general "this is broken and needs to be fixed somehow" comment/issue
post, is all.

Cheers,

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

From: Maraikayar Prem Nawaz
Date: Tue, Aug 06 2013 5:50AM
Subject: Re: Making Bootstrap more accessible...
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Hi,

Thanks Patrick for bringing in the issue of Bootstrap Accessibility.

BootStrap is used by more than 1% of the Web
http://blog.meanpath.com/twitter-bootstrap-now-powering-1-percent-of-the-web/
Which means more and more websites share these Inaccessible components (
http://expo.getbootstrap.com/) . Their main focus is on
Mobile,performance,etc., and NOT on Accessibility.

I agree with Patrick comment:
"BootStrap Developers lack the interest, time and knowledge to commit to
accessibility"
As you could clearly see from the accessibility issues filed, that many of
them are closed even without any actual work on the fix.
https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/search?q=accessibility&type=Issues
Probably what they need probably is a push for Accessibility. We could
create new github tickets( https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/new) and
try to push. I will also try to work for this in my free time.

And as Jennifer rightly said it takes lot of time to work on the fix,
though the fix may be small.
Patrick, you know what i mean. You had to get back to the issue couple of
times, before it got merged to wip. (
https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/6441) .
But I could see that the developers are trying hard to fix some of the
issues (https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/9137).



Regards
-Nawaz
Twitter: @mpnkhan





On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 10:06 PM, Patrick H. Lauke < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >wrote:

> On 02/08/2013 16:34, Greg Gamble wrote:
> > I don't think that’s a good assessment of the TW Bootstrap
> > originators,
>
> I was only paraphrasing some of the concerns others have previously
> raised about difficulties in getting accessibility into the agenda of
> big frameworks. As I said, my own experience has been nothing but
> positive, but nonetheless I posit that it is because what I pushed for
> was in easily-committable format already, rather than just being a
> general "this is broken and needs to be fixed somehow" comment/issue
> post, is all.
>
> Cheers,
>
> P
> --
> Patrick H. Lauke
> > re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
> [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
>
> www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
> http://redux.deviantart.com | http://flickr.com/photos/redux/
> > twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke
> > > > >

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Tue, Aug 06 2013 8:34AM
Subject: Re: Making Bootstrap more accessible...
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On 06/08/2013 12:50, Maraikayar Prem Nawaz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks Patrick for bringing in the issue of Bootstrap Accessibility.
>
> BootStrap is used by more than 1% of the Web
> http://blog.meanpath.com/twitter-bootstrap-now-powering-1-percent-of-the-web/
> Which means more and more websites share these Inaccessible components (
> http://expo.getbootstrap.com/) . Their main focus is on
> Mobile,performance,etc., and NOT on Accessibility.

Which is understandable, and reflected in the vast majority of projects
out there.

> I agree with Patrick comment:
> "BootStrap Developers lack the interest, time and knowledge to commit to
> accessibility"
> As you could clearly see from the accessibility issues filed, that many of
> them are closed even without any actual work on the fix.
> https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/search?q=accessibility&type=Issues

I only had a cursory glance over the list of issues there, but I see
that a lot of them are actually openend by the maintainers themselves.
So the situation is not too dire. Also, some of the ones closed are
clearly being closed because they state problems, rather than also
providing a mergeable code patch with the solution, which reinforces my
point, and general administrivia (something filed against an old or
wrong branch).

> Probably what they need probably is a push for Accessibility. We could
> create new github tickets( https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/new) and
> try to push. I will also try to work for this in my free time.

I would definitely suggest working on a few, but well-formed pull
requests with mergeable code, rather than filing a large number of
purely "problem description" type issues. Don't see it as a "they need a
push" - this seems to imply that, after enough pushing, we'll finally
get the devs to prioritize accessibility, which isn't going to
happen...if anything, they'll get weary of yet another a11y request.
Instead, the onus is on us (tech-savvy and accessibility-savvy people)
to keep an eye on the project, and where necessary push code back into
the main repo.

> And as Jennifer rightly said it takes lot of time to work on the fix,
> though the fix may be small.
> Patrick, you know what i mean. You had to get back to the issue couple of
> times, before it got merged to wip. (
> https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/6441) .

Yup, it's not easy, definitely. But I see it as meeting the
developers/core maintainers half-way with ready code. The rest of the
discussion in my specific case was more about clarifying some of the
more subjective points (as we know, there are many different takes on
certain aspects of accessibility, which even "experts" can't agree on),
in particular ARIA's key handling for menus which I'm not a fan of...

> But I could see that the developers are trying hard to fix some of the
> issues (https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/9137).

Anyway, sorry, don't mean to disagree. I think we're working towards the
same goal. My main point, again, is that the key to getting Bootstrap
(and similar projects) more accessible is to actually engage with the
devs in their own language, on their own terms...which means pull
requests with ready code :)


Cheers,

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke