Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

Re:Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering by moshmosh on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @10:40AM (#27130867)

The only thing that's kept everyone from doing that, so far, is accessibility. If not for that all the major ad platform companies (FB, Twitter, Google, and so on) would be already be all-in on Canvas.

Accessibility concerns make it both expensive to develop a UI that renders to canvas, and ensures that the content can be processed & understood by a program (else how will assistive tools read it?), which opens up the door to ad blockers again, defeating the purpose of the whole exercise.

We literally have blind people to thank for the Web remaining as open as it has, for this long.

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Re:Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering by alisonkisk on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @04:01PM (#27134481)

Do you have any evidence for this idea?

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Re:Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering by moshmosh on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @04:25PM (#27134720)

Only that it's a really obvious move for them, for a few reasons (including that making it the norm for stopping ad blockers and trackers forces all their would-be competitors to play catch-up on basic taken-for-granted stuff like displaying text on a screen) and accessibility is the only thing I'm aware of that attacks both the difficulty of the project and the feasibility of the desired outcome, sufficiently to explain why they've not at least given it a shot.

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