[LINK] protecting online content - AFR technique

[Tom Worthington]

At 12:12 PM 28/04/2008, Sylvano wrote:
>... AFR ( http://www.afr.com/ ) has implemented some CSS magic to 
>provide an extra level of frustration to online content copiers ...

AFR have scrambled the text of articles and then use CSS to 
unscramble them. This is done so if you attempt to copy the text you 
get unreadable characters. But this may stop adaptive 
technology  designed for people with vision impairment from working 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_technology>. AFR therefore may 
in breech of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 
<http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/WWW_3/www_3.html#s2_2>.

For a quick test I selected the article "Chance to bid for $60m ATO 
desktop" (30 Apr 2008, The Australian Financial Review,Ben Woodhead): 
<http://www.afr.com/home/viewer.aspx?EDP://20080430000020603558&magsection=news-information&title=Chance+to+bid+for+%2460m+ATO+desktop&source=/_xmlfeeds/information/feed.xml#wrap-home>

I tried to read the article using the  NVDA screen reader, which 
reads on the content of web pages as synthetic speech 
<http://www.nvda-project.org/>. The result was unintelligible.

Here is what the article looks like:

"Chance to bid for $60m ATO desktop

30 Apr 2008 | The Australian Financial Review | Ben Woodhead

T e  u t a i n  a a i n  f i e  s  i i g  u i e s   s c n  b t  a  i 
s $  b l i n  n o m t o  t c n l g  o t o r i g  r j c  a t r  t  p n 
d  p  i d n  f r   $6  m l i n   y a  d s t p  o p t r  e v c s  o t a t...."

The title is readable, but then all the text of the body of the 
article is scrambled. The text to speech software attempts to then 
read out this.

It might be that the AFR have provided an accessible option for the 
pages, but I couldn't find it. AFR might also argue that it would be 
too difficult, or too expensive, to make the pages accessible and so 
exempt them from the legal requirement for accessibility 
<http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/WWW_3/www_3.html#s4>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU