@grammargirl We are supposed to... part of any website build, other than the steps prior to building it, include usability and accessability reviews... websites that fail these two important reviews usually get sued by the ADA lawyers who are looking to make a quick buck suing and settling with website owners when their sites fail the most basic navigation and accessability requirements. If the site you are speaking about is poorly built or fails the ADA accessibility, report them... usually the weight of litigation tends to light a fire under the website owners to fix the issues post haste. Weird pop ups or unclear direction are all part of that accessability and usability aspect of a good, easy to use website.

@grammargirl Similar experience: 70+ yo person having to deal with expired X.509 certificates (.gov.hu app) - what are these devs smoking??

@grammargirl It's fairly simple:

If you're sending someone a PDF (or similar) via a text or an "app" then FFS also send an email so that the poor punter can read it on a real screen.

@grammargirl I feel this so much. I’ve helped family members with various medical sites and trying to get some things done has been possible only because I have a lot of technical skills and worked something out that should have been obvious. It absurd how broken some of these are. Or just obnoxious in other ways. One hospital system makes me sign unchanged paperwork for nearly every appointment no matter how recent the last was. Another one - that uses the same underlying platform! - has been configured to only ask once a year.

I worked somewhere previously that did a lot of software development for payment services. I noticed that a lot of the issue with bad user experience in the software for internal staff (e.g. sales, support folks, etc) came of the developers having no concrete experience of USING the processes they were writing the software to do. I wonder how much that comes into play with healthcare platforms. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s A Lot.

@grammargirl
Haha don’t get me started with that 💩😂

@grammargirl yeah @slightlyoff has been ranting about this forever

@grammargirl the team I'm on has put accessibility as our number one priority for years now. We think it's the right thing to do, in general, but especially because we maintain a public university website!

It is so surprising to me when I meet other web developers and I mention that such-and-such new trend/feature wouldn't be accessible and they say "so?"

Or when I mention spending time with our technical writers to make the copy on our forms easy to understand and they say "why?"

Clear instructions don't only benefit 80 year olds, or people with limited comprehension, it just saves your brain a few processor cycles.

Given how much of our lives are managed by web apps, I think everyone's lives would be happier if companies and project managers were mindful of basic user experience issues when scoping out the budget for these things.

@grammargirl

i have said for quite a while that no developer should be allowed to write a single line of code until they've done 6 months of desktop support at an extended care facility.

i now have to do all technical "things" for my mother, since the web sites and apps she's forced to use are mostly unusable for her.

@TimWardCam I agree with that but would also point tout that you assume that the poor punter has email. My 87 year old Dad has no idea how computers work. He retired as a painter and decorator 10 years ago and his wife always used to do the computer-y stuff before she passed away. Now he is excluded from various low-cost energy tariffs because they are only available online and don’t get me started on trying to park in town without a mobile phone to pay for it. It is just cr*p the way that those without the ability to work computers are just thrown on the scrap heap.
Not digging at you, honest, just pointing out that there are so many assumptions made by others that everyone worth dealing with (i.e. monetisable) is online. Sorry for the rant.

@cyberhoover Yes, there have to be non-computer alternatives. When I was a councillor this was a basic principle of how to provide public services (I'm not sure it still is).

There's a car park in #Cambridge which when I last heard had almost no usage because nobody could make the online payment system work.

I personally have (despite trying for some time) *never* succeeded in making *any* pay-by-phone system work. And I'm a professional techie.

@grammargirl

understand completely. My 74 yr old gal friend has an Apple phone, fairly new one (mine is Samsung), but 2 days ago she somehow lost her Contacts list from her phone. I confessed that I have never had an Apple phone nor want one. I've been happy with mine. She hasn't figured out yet how to get it back, although I did locate some instructions online on how, but she is skittish. Argh!

@grammargirl

Technology has often been used to divorce citizens from public services.
https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2025/09/24/administrative-hurdles-to-disability-benefits-are-barriers-to-survival/474244/

After 50 years of Koch Network attacks on public education, average American literacy is now at 6th grade

Hand a 16 page government form to such a resident. Add phony "privacy" requirements to thwart assistance. Voila, employment insurance claims or welfare rates magically fall

Jim Crow requirements for literacy tests or poll taxes.
https://slate.com/life/2013/06/voting-rights-and-the-supreme-court-the-impossible-literacy-test-louisiana-used-to-give-black-voters.html

https://www.history.com/articles/jim-crow-laws-black-vote

@grammargirl as healthy young person with an entire career in tech I can’t get my insurance provider’s website nor app to work as intended either. Shit’s broken.

@Oma_Trisha_F No argument about the shit stains currently in office... but the ADA sets the laws... conforming to those laws is less important to the government, but it is certainly important from a civil perspective... If you have a website that isn't in compliance with the ADA, you can get sued... in civil court... for damages... which just takes someone willing to file a grievance with ADA.gov... after that, it gets expensive for the website owner... I had a client who received a letter four months ago... the current admin can't stop a civil lawsuit from being filed, and that's enough to make any website owner make the necessary fixes before they get fined.

@Oma_Trisha_F Don't be sorry... since I just fixed a website of someone who got a notification from the ADA about four months ago (well into the cheetoh in chief's second reign), I know they are still sending out notices of failure... that may change, but until I stop being contracted to fix these things, I will assume it's business as usual for the ADA...

@Oma_Trisha_F My concern is strictly from the perspective of a working web developer who has experience dealing with the ADA to fix websites that have failed an accessibility audit. I do not hold an opinion about disabilities, real or alleged, beyond what this thread is about... namely, poorly built websites that make it difficult for people to use them as well as the repercussions of allowing a website to be unusable for folks with visual, auditory, or cognitive challenges. All doctors might as well roll chicken bones to diagnose maladies... they will be right and wrong just as often as they are now.