That depends on what your goals are. I want to surround myself with those who are willing to fervently argue their ideas, and those who do not or cannot: I have nothing to learn from them.
And it would be terribly presumptuous of you to assume that my persona given here is found in all of my social activities. If you assume this, you're not being fair (really, to yourself).
You need to understand that a handicapped person just hit a Web page, out of the hundreds, if not thousands, that are hit a day, that, in my understanding, just overrides that dyslexic person's crutch, that handicapped person's wheelchair. When that page loaded, I personally _felt like_ someone (accidentally) kicked my crutch out from under me, or criticized me because I am not able to perform as well because of a handicap. This is how accessibility issues play out[1]; people feel hurt and victimized by facts of their obscurity which they cannot control.
I am very confident that you are not fully appreciating the gravity of the issue here.
You're correct that your "rant-y" format does not exclude or prevent the flow of information, but what it does do is make people far less inclined to internalize or act on that information.
I assume your goal is to get people to say, "this is a problem that should be fixed, so I'm going to fix it". The tone and methods with which you're communicating in this discussion are much more likely to get people to say, "this is a problem that should be fixed, but the only people who care about it are assholes, so I see no reason to help them." You appear to be well-intentioned, and your anger is more than justified, but it's important to recognize when toning down your hostility (which, to be clear, doesn't necessarily mean masking your passion and ferver) is a necessary step towards enacting positive change.
Being penalized 1/100 of 1% of revenue doesn't really inspire a sense of urgency or "gravity". Seems like it might be worth it for companies to wait until they get sued before taking accessibility seriously.
Another possibility would be to post a blog/article which references and links all of the design practices you take offence with, and then diatribe so as not to clutter HN threads of discussion on the subject matter and not the design aspects of the site.
And honestly, I don't think this is an issue that needs to be addressed with heavy software or complicated programming gestures. So, for instance,
"One obvious quick and low-cost solution is to make a CNAME Record that renders the dyslexic font via CloudFlare; like mobile."
I just spurted that out while reviewing another forum where I have made the suggestion to render dyslexic fonts. The above suggestion would not have to impact anyone, and it is trivial to pull off. The outcome is there becomes a reserved DNS space for http://{dyslexic_contextualization}.{domain}.{ext}.
What is needed here is not more code, but agreement and strategy. But before all of that, an understanding that this is a problem, regardless of the number of people it affects. Dyslexia is a feature of nature; so pointing out that it only affects a small number says nothing about the future holds. And even further, dyslexia is a spectrum disorder, so it plausibly could be and probably is more widespread than we understand it. Most people live with it out of shame or fear the consequences of "coming out."
I'm _sure_ we're all on the same page with these points I've made, and that I really did not need to express them. Then again, the tech industry is hotly debating sexism as if women were "coming out of the closet": "I'm a programmer!"
@salemh You may not have noticed this, but all of this is incredibly relevant and spins off of the OP. I had that intuition shortly after posting, and it was confirm'd by the other poster who merely quoted the OP as a response to me.
I dig your suggestion, but your criticism I feel lacks sufficient observation.
