Comment on What's the biggest change you would like to see in computing/tech?
librecat@lemmy.basedcount.com 11 months ago
Accessibility and internationalization first. A lot of projects start without it and tack it on later. It’s so much better to have good roots and promote diversity and inclusivity from the start.
RonSijm@programming.dev 11 months ago
Could you elaborate in what context and to what extend? I can agree that bigger companies with large user-bases should have a focus on accessibility and internationalization -
But generally a lot of projects start with just one dev solving a problem they have themselves and make their solution Open-Source. Anecdotally, I’m dumping my solutions on Github that are already barely accessible to anyone somewhat tech-illiterate. No one is paying me anything for it. Why would I care whether it’s accessible or internationalized for non-English speakers?
ursakhiin@beehaw.org 11 months ago
Internationalization isn’t about the translation. It’s about not hard coding the strings that display. Putting them somewhere that is easy to swap out would allow users to provide their own if they wanted.
librecat@lemmy.basedcount.com 11 months ago
As a solo developer, some things are out of scope like writing translations or ensuring full compliance with accessibility standards. What’s important is to have some knowledge of what things block progress in these areas. For example, not treating all strings like ASCII, or preferring native widgets/html elements as those better support accessiblity tools.