No. This is wrong.
First, web sites are in fact easy. That's why I'm so excited about Aria: in the case of web sites, it can be as easy as adding barely anything to the HTML. In another couple years, once all the bugs are worked out, we'll be able to have desktop-like apps in the browser, and everyone will be able to play with accessibility.
But desktops aren't this way. That alternative text on the image? It involves implementing a COM interface and responding to a custom Windows message. The total number of lines of code for adding support is somewhere around 500, assuming you even can. Most GUI frameworks are at a very high level and you can't get in to where you need to be to do this. If you are lucky, your framework already provides the support-I am aware of a grand total of 0 that do so but Winforms and WPF *might*. Other things that are problematic depending on your GUI framework: changing a control's type as the screen reader sees it, adding accessibility information to a custom control, telling the screen reader that label a goes with control b, and I haven't even talked about the nightmare of making table controls accessible-there is a reason that I export to CSV and use Excel when I need such.
On the internet, your web browser translates HTML into the DOM, exposes the DOM, and hides all of this. If you gave me an IDE that was fully in my web browser, I would agree with your statement-getting it to be accessible would be pretty easy, comparatively. But doing it for a desktop app requires a ton of specialized knowledge.
But that's not even the worst news. I am not aware of an IDE that doesn't use a custom framework or at least a custom control for something useful. Microsoft is not using WPF or Winforms, they're using an internal toolkit that we don't have access to. Older ones have less problems because they used to use more standard controls. Netbeans and the stuff from IntelliJ are using Swing, but in such a way that you can't use them--not to mention the accessibility issues of Swing in the first place, and the fact that enabling it actually opens a huge security hole in your system (larger than normal for a screen reader). Others use QT (finally starting to maybe get better, but with huge bugs yet) and GTK (don't hold your breath). Even some of the built-in WPF and Winforms controls are inaccessible to one extent or another, though those tend to at least be passable. The next best GUI toolkit for us, WX, isn't fully accessible either: all the advanced controls like property lists and tables need to be exposed, probably with IA2.
But there's one final hidden cost, too. You have to hire someone with very specialized knowledge. This isn't a $50000 job, this is a minimum $100000 job. And you have to keep them hired or it just slips back to where it was over time and you might as well not have bothered. But it's probably not one person, it's probably a team, so yes. It's expensive. The only reason Eclipse is even accessible is that IBM paid for it: they wrote a custom GUI framework for it and had a team who put in the components needed, and yes, it was a huge effort. The workarounds being suggested here change the visual experience drastically and are screen reader and screen reader version specific; they work for little blindie apps, but not for Microsoft who can't sacrifice sighted user experience for blind user experience. Not to mention that your afternoon of playing isn't going to give you the years of experience needed to do this right the first time, and any company concerned about it also needs to be worried about 10 other disabilities-you're also going to have to give this team color changes, font changes, stuff related to dyslexia and all sorts of fun.
It's simply not going to happen, and I'm sorry that your optimism about it will be crushed in the near future. I am certain it will. I'd bet just about anything. We're at the point of having to make laws in order to get companies to even care. This is not a happy field, and there is a reason I have decided that it is not my long-term career goal: your accessibility team is often told to do the bare minimum so that if a lawsuit comes along they can say they technically met the guidelines.
And more people tab than you think-it is faster than a mouse if you know what you're doing or if you're trying to enter data in 50 consecutive text fields.
If you don't believe me, go try to make some WX controls accessible. Then you will understand the scope of the problem you're brushing aside with "people don't understand us".
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