Enforced accessibility would be horrible. What if I want to make an application just for me? Or a game or something else where the basic concept isn't fundamentally accessible for blind people?
A lot of the open source software I release is for one reason and one reason only: it's useful for me. I generally try to make it a bit useful for others as well, but that's mostly just a nice bonus. I do care about accessibility in general (actually, I've been meaning to ask Matt about accessibility on CLI programs) but it's not really something I think about on these kind of programs, just like I usually don't consider most use cases outside of my own. If someone were to bring it up then I'd see if something could be done (like any other issue people bring up), but this depends on my available time and "if I feel like it" as well.
The alternative would be to never release it at all and keep it in my ~/code directory. I think that would be a loss.
> (actually, I've been meaning to ask Matt about accessibility on CLI programs
Assuming you meant me and not some other Matt, go ahead. In general, I'd say it's pretty hard to make line-oriented CLI programs inaccessible. Screen-oriented (e.g. ncurses-based) programs are, in my experience, harder to use with a screen reader, but still generally not terrible. Anyway, happy to answer any specific questions you have.
Some time ago I was drafting an article on CLI UX principles, and I wondered if there are specific a18y issues or annoyances that could be included. I couldn't find a lot of resources on this.
I do remember this old bsdtalk interview from years ago[1] about a Braille user, and what she said pretty much mirrors your comment: "CLI apps are usually really good, curses can be tricky". My feeling was that there wasn't much written about it because there's not much to write about: "it just works".
Still, there might be (small) things that might make a difference; as you pointed out in your other reply, it's hard for me to truly "experience" this. I thought it might be a good idea to check in with some people.
A lot of the open source software I release is for one reason and one reason only: it's useful for me. I generally try to make it a bit useful for others as well, but that's mostly just a nice bonus. I do care about accessibility in general (actually, I've been meaning to ask Matt about accessibility on CLI programs) but it's not really something I think about on these kind of programs, just like I usually don't consider most use cases outside of my own. If someone were to bring it up then I'd see if something could be done (like any other issue people bring up), but this depends on my available time and "if I feel like it" as well.
The alternative would be to never release it at all and keep it in my ~/code directory. I think that would be a loss.