- From: John Whelan <whelan@itp.unibe.ch>
- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:45:25 +0200
- To: lynx-dev@sig.net
- Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
[on web sites excluding Lynx by checking the User Agent string] >> Is there a normal protocol for resolving these issues with >> web site maintainers? Since this is a high-visibility site, >> I thought I'd inquire if there was a history. > I think attempts normally fail, but I would suggest the following: > Carefully read all legal notices on the site: if they refer to > issues of security (trusted SSL implementations) you will probably > have no luck and may risk prosecution if anything goes wrong with > their security; if they mention spiders or crawlers, you might just > be in luck but will have to really convince them that Lynx is normally > operated interactively by a human; if they mention advert blocking > or stripping, you are probably out of luck and any access with a non-GUI > browser would probably be fraudulent. [snip] >> What would folks think of a feature that allowed one to associated >> a user-agent name with a particular web-site, so that one could >> more easily access recalcitrant web sites without annoying >> manual configuration? > I think this could be considered a conspiracy to obtain a service by > deception and, even though it wouldn't be worth prosecuting, could lead > to an arms race, where the site looks for more reliable ways to block > unapproved browsers and crawlers. An alternative opinion (and one consistent with views I've seen expressed on the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative Interest Group mailing list) would be that excluding non-graphical browsers in the first place may be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, since it denies access to blind users using Lynx with a screen reader. John T. Whelan whelan@iname.com http://www.slack.net/~whelan/
Received on Wednesday, 25 August 1999 05:45:33 UTC