| > Separate, but equal isn't equal. The world of mobile web sites demonstrates that this swings both ways. Some web sites have mobile-specific interfaces that greatly enhance the experience when using the site on a small screen touch device compared to a large screen keyboard/mouse device. Wikipedia for example, the desktop interface is terrible on a phone and the mobile interface is terrible on a desktop. Obviously other sites are well known to have swung in the opposite direction and whichever variant is not their primary target is significantly worse. I think that in a similar way the ability to serve specific content optimized for screen readers would allow those who care to deliver a much better experience, but likewise those who don't might make something worse. --- Of course the simple web site purist in me wants to say that every web site should just stick to basic formatting and text-primary designs that work well in any browsers, but that idea is not just unrealistic thanks to marketing people but it would simply not work for so many modern sites and web applications. I say the solution is the same as it's always been for when bad web sites do stupid things based on user agent or whatever else. Lie to them. As long as the screen reader can turn off the identifier tag it seems like the worst case outcome is a minor annoyance to have to blacklist that web site from receiving the tag. ---
edit: also a side thought, the things that make a screen reader work well also make it easier to separate content from ads, so there is an inherent commercial incentive for ad-supported content providers to only do the minimum legally required. |