I discovered Gemini in 2023 and really enjoy it. I like the minimalism. I like that page presentation is up to the user. I’ve even come to appreciate the line-based nature of its markup, because theoretically at least, it means a screen reader user knows that elements are always arranged top to bottom.
I say “theoretically” since I have yet to run into an accessible Gemini browser for Windows, which is unfortunate since Gemini’s whole deal is text first.
And to head off the inevitable comment about Linux, in order to have an accessible app you need an accessible OS for it to sit on top of.
The issue is that if you don’t give people imbedded images, they re-invent them with inaccessible ASCII art. If you don’t give them the ability to change fonts, they reinvent it using those awful Unicode hacks. Etc etc etc. From my experience working in the industry, you have to give people a standard way to do all of the things they want to do. Otherwise they’ll invent nine different ways of doing them, and not a single one will be accessible. When I looked via a proxy, like half the pages I encountered in gemspace had ASCII art. An accessible browser would take maybe a day or two. I just can’t think of any reason to bother.
Yes. I had the same thought. If it ever became more widely adopted the preformatted code blocks would be used to plug holes in the markup standard like tables, nested lists, etc. in a way that would not be accessible.
Also, an accessible browser would take a day or two for someone with coding experience and a desire to develop said browser, and there seems to be little overlap on that Venn diagram.
Yes, that’s what I meant. I have the experience to do it. I just see no point because of the issues with the standards.