To all people saying "We should add some link to the news because I don't know who Andy Grove was". C'mon, this is the community of people who don't need to have everything delivered on the silver plate - either you know, or you spend a while and find out by yourself. That's something we do every day.

It might make sense to add an "alt" attribute with a name to the bar, or perhaps a small link in memorial.

Accessibility tip - you're probably thinking of the "title" attribute. Agreed though.

Actually, probably better, aria-label:

https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2013/01/using-the-html-ti...

Edit: FWIW I as a blind user didn't notice the bar. Glad this story pointed it out. Kind of wish HN would update its layout to be more accessible. There are a ton of aspects of HN that are entirely unusable or painful--no easy way to navigate comments by thread, no accessible indication of downvote status, no easy accessible way to scan the front page other than pressing tab 6-7 times to navigate between entry titles... I suppose some of that isn't a huge deal--I just don't notice or care about downvotes and speak my mind (within reason) as a result--but the whole tabbing half a dozen times to hear each new headline is a bit ridiculous.

Anyhow, sorry to derail the black bar discussion. Respects to the deceased, but I'd still like to see HN become more accessible and inclusive. When you literally can't notice things like this then they become aspects of a community you aren't included in.

IMNHO Not at all! Just like I love the fact that someone that didn't realize the meaning of the bar, simply asked (and so helped others figured it out), I love your input on accessibility. I'm sure I'm not the only one that hadn't considered the accessibility implications of such "semantic" style/design choices. FWIW, I think it's a bit crazy to use a table with a 1px image and background colour (if I'm reading the source right?), when a "border-top: thick solid black" would do the trick. But then again, HN does stick to a strict 90s table-layout. That still leaves out the question of where/how to communicate the change to those that are vision impaired.

I wish development of the HN code was a bit more open - as far as I know, the current code, has evolved[1] a bit from what's currently readily accessible as FOSS[0] -- but doing something with the layout to help accessibility while still staying true to the spirit of HN really shouldn't be that hard. And I'm sure the result would be greatly helped by some of HN readers that are able to do the change themselves, for themselves.

As for general accessibility, I think everyone would want vote-buttons that work (I'm using vimperator, so on Desktop, it doesn't really matter if the arrows are invisible on a big monitor - I just know that the "first" link-hint is "up", and the second is "down", indications of which way one voted (and a grace period to change/cancel), and a way to hide threads.

The latter is especially useful if the first comment on a story is a controversial tangent.

As for the black bar: Having those that change the bar submit a story at the same time (eg: the "Andy Glover has died"-story that was on the front page earlier), and have the bar link to the HN submission might not be a bad idea. We sadly live in a time where it might not be obvious, even in a relatively small community, for who or what the black bar express sympathy.

[0] "Anarki: a publicly modifiable 'wiki-like' fork of Arc Lisp (http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html)" https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki

[1] "Ask HN: Is the Hacker News Team Actively Developing Arc?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11240350