from Hacker News

Firefox Developer Tools: Accessibility inspector

by teamhappy on 6/25/18, 12:06 PM with 55 comments

• by ndarilek on 6/25/18, 2:18 PM

  I hope this means the developer tools themselves will actually become accessible. As a blind web developer running Linux and Orca, bunches of things have been broken for a very long time, to the point where I'm considering switching to ChromeOS and running Linux in chroots/containers just to get a better set of web development tools. I'm glad that they're empowering developers to create accessible websites, but if blind/disabled developers were empowered to develop on equal footing, then that'd be another way to achieve the same goal.

  As one example, I can't navigate the network inspector via keyboard in any meaningful way. Firebug used to have this nailed, to the point where you could even enable an accessibility mode (though arguably accessibility mode should have just been the only mode.) And yes, I'd happily file issues for this and half a dozen other things, but at some point I actually have to do my job, and in this case that might mean jumping ship to a browser that seems more accessible.

• by KeitIG on 6/25/18, 1:06 PM

  As a front-end developer, accessibility has always been a way for me to describe to non-technical people what I actually do for a living.

  Saying: "I build web applications" means nothing to them, and saying "I create website" makes you look like a wizard doing some black magic.

  But saying "my job is to make websites accessible to everyone: we are used to use a screen and a mouse, but what if you are blind or deaf? Those people should not be allowed to go on any website? My role is to make those people able to browse the web, as you and me" give them an example of what kind of problems you actually solve as a web developer.

• by have_faith on 6/25/18, 1:13 PM

  For every website a client has asked me to check SEO reports and the like, I get 0 requests to check accessibility or any mention of it. I do my best to make what I build accessible with the time I have, but clients (and many employers) seem blind to it. Has anyone had any success with getting accessibility taken more seriously in these contexts?

• by Someone1234 on 6/25/18, 2:08 PM

  I use the Accessibility Inspector in Chrome's devtools. But in both the cases of Firefox and Chrome, it should be remembered that the Accessibility Inspector is only a partial view into accessibility issues, and that better extensions exist to show you a broader picture.

  See this article for suggestions in other better tools and techniques:

  https://www.24a11y.com/2017/accessibility-testing-tools-desk...

• by kumarharsh on 6/25/18, 5:44 PM

  I agree with ndarilek's comment. When the Firebug team started making firebug.next, there were huge problems with the inbuilt dev-tools. They then decided to merge the two projects and stopped developing Firebug. I had expressed my concerns to them after trying the beta for a long time. The team was very receptive of the comments, but sadly not much was implemented until I stopped using FF as my main browser. Even to this date, the Firefox Devtools are nowhere near Chrome's. Yes, there are some very useful features added in Firefox's Devtools but the performance is very poor. Especially the Scripting tab. Try setting a breakpoint in a half-decent webapp - the whole browser(!) hangs for atleast 10 minutes, sometimes forever. There were problems with displaying raw JSON response in the network tab too for a long time - Firebug had the funtionality, so was shocking to see FF drop it in favour of a very clumsy and inaccessible tree view. Then, when FF Quantumcame, I flocked back to FF thinking the devtools would be fixed too. Nope. I have been a long time FF user (I think since v1.5, Netscape before that), and would very much like to use FF as my main browser. But as a web developer, it's impossible to use it. The sheer number of hours wasted just trying to keep my browser to not hang trumps my fanboyism. There is nothing better than what Chrome offers in this area.

• by Leimi on 6/25/18, 1:20 PM

  Great to see browsers adding accessibility in their devtools since a few months!

  One thing I don't understand here: why is the Accessibility tab not shown by default? Accessibility is something lots of developers don't even know about. I'm sure having the tab visible by default would help greatly in making developers more aware of it.

• by bungie4 on 6/25/18, 3:11 PM

  Good timing. I'm currently working on an existing app that is targeted specifically at those with accessibility issues as part of a larger service offering. More so towards those with hearing issues.

  This is a good first step, I have been using the WAVE accessibility plug in for Firefox to identify missed issues in my first run through of the app.

  Luckily, we have an employee with a visual impairment that we can utilize for real world testing of the app.

  This really is its own specialty.

• by brightball on 6/25/18, 1:23 PM

  This is great news. Just making it easier for developers to see the impact of small things without having to go look for tools to do it is huge in this area.