I'm sure this will freak out many indie developers, but relax this doesn't affect you.
Just yesterday I stumbled upon a developer video from Germany who was trying to build some AI RAG SaaS for small businesses and was completely overwhelmed with the EU Privacy and data protection regulations and was stuttering when was talking about going to jail for using OpenAI API the wrong way.
Just Wow. These things are not for you, nobody is going to jail for their app or paying life ruining fines in Europe as long as they don't actually cause real harm. All those rules and regulations are intended for large companies who abuse their power or harm large parts of the society by ignoring stuff when not making them profit.
I read the article and I feel unseen, invisible. It is yet another accessibility initiative that assumes users fit into the 'blind' or 'not blind' categories. There's never a mention of people needing speech recognition or any other physical mobility aid. Keyboard shortcuts are not enough.
I should be able to navigate a webpage completely by speech. The actual speech UI would take some thinking. You want both absolute by name and relative references, as in "follow that link," "third link back," "follow threads", and " follow new," as a bare minimum.
First good way to improve accessibility is to remove cookie banners, especially those that pop out after a while after website loads.
I'm all for making the apps / websites that are essential for disabled people accessible.
But for smaller companies, getting the website/app up to the rules for European Accessibility act can be over their limits, cause it's not an easy task, depending on the type of UI your app is using.
So their only option is just to avoid Europen market, if they don't want to go to jail.
And European Software marked will be left behind even more.
Europe has 0 power in online world and they keep it like that by making dumb rules everyday.
There's a German version that has nice FAQ and is written in a more human friendly way going into all the details. You can use Google translate https://bfsg-gesetz.de/#faq
I'm very interested in how they've implemented Google Analytics. No external JS is loaded, just 9KB of packed JS embedded implementing a minimal call... and then it is being sent to their own script analytics4.php which acts like MITM. Does anyone know the name of the plugin or package they are using?
These rules don't apply to businesses that make less than 2.000.000€ a year and have less than 10 employees and don't create physical products.
Punishing groups for failing to implement accessability seems drastic, isn't there some to spurn them to action with incentivization instead? You catch more flies with honey..
Uhm hasn't this been the case since 2019-2022 or somewhere close to those years?
In Denmark we had a year to make government/public apps fully accessible and the same for websites and documents presented on websites.
We also had to create accessibility certificates and dedicated pages on the websites to prove and clarify the state of the accessibility (or lack of, together with a statement of what's being done to remedy the issues).
Are these "new" EU laws for a different sector (private?) or something else? I can't find any references in the article. I may be blind (pun intended).
> If companies fail to comply with the European Accessibility Act they could be hit with fines and even prison sentences for senior staff.
That seems extremely excessive. A prime example of regulatory overreach.
Do adult websites also need to implement this? For example, captions on videos?
Can AI make inaccessible websites accessible from a consumer end? Why or why not?
Do adult websites also need to implement this? For example, captions on adult videos?
Isn't it the job of the User Agent to ensure the User can interact with the content?
It's a bit odd you could get sent to prison if your website can't be used by e.g. a blind person, but it's perfectly fine if it can't be used by someone without disabilities.
It seems to me that the article does not correctly define who this law targets. The actual regulation is about [1]:
- computers and operating systems
- ATMs, ticketing and check-in machines
- smartphones
- TV equipment related to digital television services
- telephony services and related equipment
- access to audio-visual media services such as television broadcast and related consumer equipment
- services related to air, bus, rail and waterborne passenger transport
- banking services
- e-books
- e-commerce
For my part, I would dream of this regulation mandating backward support for browsers at least seven years back to stop the nowadays framework madness. As a great example, my bank login page is 10MB.
[1] https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/ju...