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Re:Avoiding bot detection: How to scrape the web without get... by kevin_thibedeau on Sunday October 31, 2021 @07:25PM (#29061459)
At a minimum any scraper that doesn't execute JS needs to impersonate a screen reader user agent. Locking out disabled people has to be many levels of illegal in most countries.
Re:Avoiding bot detection: How to scrape the web without get... by Abishek_Muthian on Monday November 01, 2021 @04:10AM (#29064137)
As a disabled person myself I will go as far to suggest that the websites should allow unfettered bot access to the disabled i.e. anything a user without malicious intent is allowed to do on a platform should be allowed to be done by a bot for a disabled because accessibility & equity are a joke.

Social media platforms has made physical appearance as the first class citizen of the reputation economy. I'm not even talking about those platforms which outright bury content from the disabled as a policy, I'm talking about those platforms whose algorithms favor selfies, videos over text/URLs and thereby putting those with accessibility issues in severe disadvantage.

Why would you use such platforms one might say, Do something which has nothing to do with the reputation economy they might add; Well have you looked at LinkedIn lately? LinkedIn has become ubiquitous with professional job search and 30 second video intro is the very first thing on the profile, not the skills which the platform was meant to be when it was launched. One must be naive to claim that the physical appearance on that video or profile picture doesn't affect the job prospects(Several studies have stated otherwise).

It's not just the physical appearance, The action of creating videos or posting photos itself is hard as a time-constrained person[1] and so I think it's reasonable to ask the platform to allow bots to post deep-fake videos of the user doing silly things which these platform expects from an average user.

[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/time-constrained-person/

Re:Avoiding bot detection: How to scrape the web without get... by judge2020 on Sunday October 31, 2021 @09:51PM (#29062315)
Blocking for not supporting JS isn't illegal nor a violation of the US ADA. You can add requirements for disabled people to access your services as long as it's reasonable, and the prevalence of screen readers that work with JS turned on likely qualifies requiring JS a reasonable request. It'd be like saying "you can't deny someone using a IE8 screen reader by only offering TLS 1.3".