Re: [Lynx-dev] reaching gmail in basic html?

[Bela Lubkin]

Karen Lewellen wrote:

> In October 2018, a senior staff member at google stated that since only
> crooks turned off JavaScript, Google was starting to use their own
> proprietary edition which among other things is supposed to detect the
> presence of adaptive technology for recaptcha, and track specifics
> about your account access .  i can share  the link to that article, or
> you can likely find the reference by doing a search for the term
> "google will not let you log into your account without JavaScript."

Please share the reference.  Share everything you've got, with
closest-to-source methods (URL to original post, for instance; not
copy-paste quotes disassociated from their sources).

> Additionally, when I first discovered that some Linux associated
> browsers, Links and Elinks, which can be compiled with a form of
> JavaScript, but which no longer work to log into gmail, I was told by
> Thomas, a member of Google's accessibility team, that these browsers
> did not use the "right kind" of JavaScript.

Of all of your communications with Google, this seems to be the only
thing they said which was true.  Jimmying a JavaScript / DOM
implementation into a text-mode browser is nearly impossible and it is
not at all surprising that the version in [e]links does not meet the
requirements.  Of course, Google *could* modify their code to succeed in
that environment, if they wanted to, but we see where that leads...

> Some of the articles I find speak of a more open source form of
> JavaScript, which some Linux developers use, but which now Google will
> not permit.

I haven't seen those articles so I don't have the correct context, but
it seems to me this will again be about functional compatibility, not
about Google intentionally blocking those things.  A bolted-on-the-side
JS/DOM implementation inside a text browser is inherently going to be
pretty different from a modern graphical browser; it would probably need
to be intentionally supported.

> Granted, I still have a post from the google accessibility team where a
> member claimed that a person should not expect to use the same adaptive
> tools they could before.
>
> Given how often adaptive technology serves as a substitute for a persons
> hands, or brain, or eyes, that attitude seems disturbing.

Quite.

If you're talking about a public post, please share.  If it's from a
mailing list or private email, consider whether you should publish it
anyway.  These are disturbing positions for a company like Google to
take.  I would expect that it's much more a case of an individual
Googler talking out his ass, than an official corporate position.
Perhaps the person who 'owns' the bug inside Google doesn't feel like
expending the effort.  Publishing it might light a fire under their ass
to fix it (I hear Twitter is a good venue for this sort of thing).

Note that in US law, and I believe EU and probably many other
jurisdictions, there are legal requirements for software accessibility.
The positions you describe seem very likely to be in violation (but I am
not at all a lawyer...)

>Bela<