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Does this meet the required standard for accessibility users? Do they have any such obligations?

by guest2457533 8y ago

ionforce 8y ago
No one cares about accessibility when ad dollars are at stake.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  They do when regulators come calling with significant penalties.
  - ahoy 8y ago
    There are no significant penalties at this time.
    - strictnein 8y ago
      They're not focusing on sites like FB, because using them isn't a requirement of any meaningful task. Lawyers are definitely going after things like companies' job sites. Applying for a job is a protected action and no discrimination is allowed, either intentional or not.
    - moojd 8y ago
      No, but there more and more lawsuits filed every year over website accessibility issues. https://www.adatitleiii.com/2019/01/number-of-federal-website-accessibility-lawsuits-nearly-triple-exceeding-2250-in-2018/ https://www.adatitleiii.com/2019/01/number-of-federal-websit...
  - erichurkman 8y ago
    if(ad_dollars > fines) { do_evil(); }
    - usefulcat 8y ago
      s/if/while/
  - CharlesColeman 8y ago
    > They do when regulators come calling with significant penalties. I'm pretty sure Facebook considers pissed off regulators a regular cost of doing business.
gothroach 8y ago
One of my first thoughts when I saw this was about screen readers. If searching "Sponsored" in Chrome doesn't match the posts, I'd wager screen readers would just go ahead and try to pronounce all the extra 'S's.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  It works fine. Screen readers obey CSS, this uses CSS to hide all of the additional elements (display: none). Screen readers are also designed to work when text is broken up by other inline elements e.g.: He<b>llo</b> world In this case it reads out both the words Sponsored and Public. > If searching "Sponsored" in Chrome doesn't match the posts That also worked perfectly fine in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Did you scroll enough to render any Sponsored posts?
  - CharlesColeman 8y ago
    So the technology to defeat this kind of obfuscation has already been developed and is reliable?
    - Someone1234 8y ago
      Well a web browser has to render it correctly, so yes? A screen reader is just another type of browser at this point. These techniques work because some blockers only support a limited subset of what a full browser can do (namely block resource locations and specific HTML elements).
    - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
      And rather insignificant to implement. All this protects against is low-effort document scraping. If they randomized it somehow, that would be a little harder to defeat.

Does this meet the required standard for accessibility users? Do they have any such obligations?

ionforce 8y ago

No one cares about accessibility when ad dollars are at stake.

ceejayoz 8y ago
They do when regulators come calling with significant penalties.
- ahoy 8y ago
  There are no significant penalties at this time.
  - strictnein 8y ago
    They're not focusing on sites like FB, because using them isn't a requirement of any meaningful task. Lawyers are definitely going after things like companies' job sites. Applying for a job is a protected action and no discrimination is allowed, either intentional or not.
  - moojd 8y ago
    No, but there more and more lawsuits filed every year over website accessibility issues. https://www.adatitleiii.com/2019/01/number-of-federal-website-accessibility-lawsuits-nearly-triple-exceeding-2250-in-2018/ https://www.adatitleiii.com/2019/01/number-of-federal-websit...
- erichurkman 8y ago
  if(ad_dollars > fines) { do_evil(); }
  - usefulcat 8y ago
    s/if/while/
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  > They do when regulators come calling with significant penalties. I'm pretty sure Facebook considers pissed off regulators a regular cost of doing business.

gothroach 8y ago

One of my first thoughts when I saw this was about screen readers. If searching "Sponsored" in Chrome doesn't match the posts, I'd wager screen readers would just go ahead and try to pronounce all the extra 'S's.

Someone1234 8y ago
It works fine. Screen readers obey CSS, this uses CSS to hide all of the additional elements (display: none). Screen readers are also designed to work when text is broken up by other inline elements e.g.: He<b>llo</b> world In this case it reads out both the words Sponsored and Public. > If searching "Sponsored" in Chrome doesn't match the posts That also worked perfectly fine in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Did you scroll enough to render any Sponsored posts?
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  So the technology to defeat this kind of obfuscation has already been developed and is reliable?
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    Well a web browser has to render it correctly, so yes? A screen reader is just another type of browser at this point. These techniques work because some blockers only support a limited subset of what a full browser can do (namely block resource locations and specific HTML elements).
  - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
    And rather insignificant to implement. All this protects against is low-effort document scraping. If they randomized it somehow, that would be a little harder to defeat.