Will accessibility tools be blocked or banned?

[Jookia]

People with disabilities use devices that automate inputs or parse and read outputs from the browser's API, such as:

• On screen keyboards
• Screen readers
• Controller to keyboard mapping

These inputs also tend to be automated by third party applications for things like auto-type input or scripting. How does this proposal plan to attest that a web browser is a human if all human interaction comes from these easily scriptable APIs?

Will accessibility tools be blocked or banned? Does that mean people with disabilities aren't human enough?

[SHAGGAR]

The attestation would demand that browsers not allow 3rd party apps to control the user agent/browser UI because that's how bots work. Also if your assistive tech would modify any content or extract the content outside of the browser that's probably out as well.

Accessibility tools that can afford to pay to be approved by an attester would likely be allowed, but any kind of free software is out.

One of the proponents of this proposal is floating around in the comments here and he shills for an anti-bot company so be wary. He doesn't care about accessibility issues because its more important that he protects his clients' precious content from "bots".

[Jookia]

I would like an official answer here. It's incredibly difficult to lock this down as it's effectively an analog hole. Even if you say something like 'we will attest that the user is running an unmodified Android or iPhone', what about third party synths that connect to Talkback or VoiceOver? What about braille displays or hardware synths? Those run over serial ports and have no authentication.

[uazo]

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1439945

currently the source code is closed, and I think it will never become open, but I would like to know too

[coreyreichle]

Banned, unless they pay the proper taxes, ahem, fees to the Lord, ahem vendors.

[lexi-the-cute]

I would like an official answer here. It's incredibly difficult to lock this down as it's effectively an analog hole. Even if you say something like 'we will attest that the user is running an unmodified Android or iPhone', what about third party synths that connect to Talkback or VoiceOver? What about braille displays or hardware synths? Those run over serial ports and have no authentication.

This! Attestation shouldn't be a thing. It's the enemy of the people and intentionally puts disabled people as second. Taking away their rights to access the internet all for a profit. This is one of those areas where unchecked capitalism is driving us into the wrong territory and government intervention will have to take place to ban this kind of software. We'll be able to add bans and restrictions under the disability acts in different countries.

Also, it'll help a lot if we socially raise awareness of this project and include the responses from the devs if they provide any. This way we can make sure people know what's going on.