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I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

blind.guru

31–40 of 333 posts

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#32
post #7

I feel like many of the text-mode browsers have failed to keep up with changing web standards. We were all mad when IE was holding back the Internet, and I'm not sure we should give lynx and w3m a pass because they're geek tools. (Accessibility is an important concern, but web browsers running under a GUI system support screen readers.) https://www.brow.sh/ is a console-based browser that claims to support modern sta…

I'll be the first (EDIT: third) of six. > If all that stuff works for everyone, why did we invent new stuff? Just because? Or perhaps it wasn't really as amazing as well all remember. To better track people and push ads. It's really mostly just it. Modern web has very little to do with providing value to the end-user; any utility that's provided is mostly a side effect, and/or a vector to lure people into situations…

>Modern web has very little to do with providing value to the end-user

I disagree strongly with this. The web has moved a lot in the direction of developer experience (ES6, modules) and new capabilities (WebSockets, WebRTC, WebAudio, SVG, canvas...). Yes, most of this happened because it's a side-effect of big surveillance capitalism companies wanting make that sweet sweet digital pollen to be even sweeter, but that doesn't make it any less sweet just because it was made in bad faith.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#33

> However, being a blind person, I guess I have to accept that Google doesn't care anymore. Jumping from "this isn't working on my incredibly niche browser" to "Google don't care about blind people" is completely ridiculous.

Lynx is niche now? Low user count, yeah, but it’s a standards complaint browser.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#34
post #33

> However, being a blind person, I guess I have to accept that Google doesn't care anymore. Jumping from "this isn't working on my incredibly niche browser" to "Google don't care about blind people" is completely ridiculous.

Lynx is niche now? Low user count, yeah, but it’s a standards complaint browser.

Lynx is the definition of niche...

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#35
post #7

I feel like many of the text-mode browsers have failed to keep up with changing web standards. We were all mad when IE was holding back the Internet, and I'm not sure we should give lynx and w3m a pass because they're geek tools. (Accessibility is an important concern, but web browsers running under a GUI system support screen readers.) https://www.brow.sh/ is a console-based browser that claims to support modern sta…

> brow.sh

Does headless Firefox (what brow.sh is at it's core) even launch if there's no X11 available? Is it that headless?

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#36

> However, being a blind person, I guess I have to accept that Google doesn't care anymore. Jumping from "this isn't working on my incredibly niche browser" to "Google don't care about blind people" is completely ridiculous.

I don't feel that's fair -- yes, Lynx is not really updated much anymore and at this point very niche. But it must work for their workflow, and I feel like something as critical as search should have fallback to work with very 'primitive' browsers and older W3 standards.

(FWIW I work at Google, but not on the search team. I might go looking at internal discussions to see if this is being looked at at all)

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#37
post #33

> However, being a blind person, I guess I have to accept that Google doesn't care anymore. Jumping from "this isn't working on my incredibly niche browser" to "Google don't care about blind people" is completely ridiculous.

Lynx is niche now? Low user count, yeah, but it’s a standards complaint browser.

The definition of niche is literally "appeals to a small, specialized section of the population" so, er, yes.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#38
post #7

I feel like many of the text-mode browsers have failed to keep up with changing web standards. We were all mad when IE was holding back the Internet, and I'm not sure we should give lynx and w3m a pass because they're geek tools. (Accessibility is an important concern, but web browsers running under a GUI system support screen readers.) https://www.brow.sh/ is a console-based browser that claims to support modern sta…

I'll be the first (EDIT: third) of six. > If all that stuff works for everyone, why did we invent new stuff? Just because? Or perhaps it wasn't really as amazing as well all remember. To better track people and push ads. It's really mostly just it. Modern web has very little to do with providing value to the end-user; any utility that's provided is mostly a side effect, and/or a vector to lure people into situations…

Come on, you can't be serious about this.

Creating sophisticated web pages is massively easier than 10 or 20 years ago. Yes, HTML of plain simple text-only pages is still pretty much the same, but most users actually prefer visually fancier content with pictures and colors.

Yes, companies presenting themselvses online profit of more capabilities. And yes, presenting ads is probably easier too. But if you think those changes were just made because of monetary greed, you could say the same about almost any technological advancement, like color photography, or electric cars, because all of these had a commercial side to them too.

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#39

> However, being a blind person, I guess I have to accept that Google doesn't care anymore. Jumping from "this isn't working on my incredibly niche browser" to "Google don't care about blind people" is completely ridiculous.

Defaulting to simple HTML allows one to support all incredibly niche browser. That is the beauty of protocols and standards. This is particularly relevant when it comes to accessibility. Google search results are literally lists of web links, so this is absolutely doable.

They don't do it because they are more preoccupied with extracting data about their users than they are about accessibility, and yes, this includes blind people. There is not way around it.

It is perfectly legal to be selfish, but let's not bullshit ourselves about what is really going on...

Re: I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx

#40

> However, being a blind person, I guess I have to accept that Google doesn't care anymore. Jumping from "this isn't working on my incredibly niche browser" to "Google don't care about blind people" is completely ridiculous.

Perhaps you could contribute better by citing examples where Google does care about blind people instead of calling an actual blind person's argument ridiculous.
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