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Comment by benced | Hacker News Reader

It's a real bummer that computers should be strictly superior to non-digital technology for accessibility (a book is a book and doesn't change after it's printed) but for economic reasons, it won't be. I can't even super blame Reddit - they're just capitalists trying to make money. It just feels like an own-goal by humanity.

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Yep. Every time someone suggests a special blind-friendly API, I remind them that HTML was that API, and it just got bastardized over time, so you need to figure out how you’d keep it from going through that same process with whatever new thing you propose.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30727672

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20224961

As an example of how this has beeen completely perverted....

Here's a snippet of HTML from Facebook advert https://imgur.com/Wx8rIOm.png

Just for "Hydrow <blue_checkmark> Sponsored" is the following HTML

Also, attempting to highlight "sponsored" also jumps back and forth because their scripts basically jigsaw the letters together from bits. And, almost all of their content on pages look like this. My guess is to jam up adblockers. But it also screws over anybody with visual difficulties (reduction of visibility to blindness).

Yea, randomized to avoid adblockers catching the div.

On the contrary, I think you can blame people who make antisocial choices. In fact, you have to.

hate the player not the game eh

In what sense is this white knighting? If anything it's approximately the opposite.

It's fine to hate both. The players allow the game to continue as it is, after all.

I’d find this more compelling if you or I were running a Reddit competitor with pro-social choices.

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