A Brazilian creative studio called Seneda & Abrucio has teamed up with Playtype, a Copenhagen-based type foundry, to build something that doesn't rely on asking nicely to...

Most mass scrapers, on the other hand, simply grab the raw HTML underneath. ShieldFont exploits this difference through an automated process called OpenType glyph substitution.

That said, because the whole defense rests on scrapers reading code rather than screens, taking a screenshot of a shielded page and running OCR on the image can still recover the real words.

Screen readers used by blind readers also work from the code, so they read the decoys aloud. ShieldFont ships with a beta feature that provides those readers with the real text instead.

  • FTonsilStones@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    751·
    2 days ago

    Per the article, yes:

    Screen readers used by blind readers also work from the code, so they read the decoys aloud.

    But:

    ShieldFont ships with a beta feature that provides those readers with the real text instead.

    • ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish
      78·
      2 days ago

      ShieldFont ships with a beta feature that provides those readers with the real text instead.

      AI scrappers will just pretend to be screen readers then.

      And if the approach becomes popular they will just OCR the text instead.

      • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
        19·
        2 days ago

        Per the GitHub:

        Accessibility layer: <Shield> hides protected regions from assistive tech and ships an a11y prop that renders a real alternative beside them — mode: "text" puts your words in the page encrypted behind a time-lock puzzle the reader’s browser opens (no link for a scraper to follow, no artifact for you to host), or mode: "audio" points at a recording you make. What remains: NVDA and JAWS verification (VoiceOver is done by hand, Windows is not), the focus indicator a sighted keyboard user loses to an invisible control, and the non-React tiers shipping none of it.

        In summary, they have two ways to get around this.

        • By default, blind people are fucked as usual. Most everything is unusable via screen reader just due to the way modern websites are designed.
        • Audio mode pre-records an audio file of your text, and plays that, bypassing the screen reader. This is extremely horrible UX for screen readers, for anything more complicated than a wall of text, but at least it’s something.
        • Text mode will do some sort of computational challenge, using CPU on the blind person’s machine for a few seconds, then revealing the original unmolested text. Assuming this works properly, because screen readers are extremely fragile beasts.
          • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
            21·
            1 day ago

            Yeah, if you care about screen reader users, functionally it’s just “Anubis but worse”. Unfortunately, most people don’t care, so for them and all visual users, it has the benefit of no additional “load time” computational check — the page appears instantly without the Anubis step. Though I’m not sure how long it takes the page to do the de-scrambling.

            The primary purpose of this project is to mutilate your HTML so bots can’t scrape it, rather than preventing bot traffic in the first place. The screen reader stuff is a bolt-on.

            • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
              8·
              1 day ago

              Unfortunately, most people don’t care

              There are laws about accessibility, at least for public websites, and probably for larger websites as they have such a large audience that disability can’t be ignored (as much).

              • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
                4·
                1 day ago

                In my experience, those laws aren’t followed much in reality. The biggest sites, sure, but most smaller sites are a mess under the hood. As long as something is “technically usable”, even if very awkward and annoying, it’s often hard to sue or anything like that. Maybe it’s different in other countries though, I live in Australia.

                Next time you use a website, try only using your keyboard to navigate it and accomplish your task, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a rough test of how much they value accessibility. For example, many websites disable the border around what you’re highlighting, so you have no idea what the tab button is about to click. Or popup windows don’t actually change your tab selection, so you have to tab through literally the entire page in the background to get to the popup window. Stuff like that; technically usable but annoying as hell.

                • [email protected]@lemmy.zipEnglish
                  4·
                  1 day ago

                  In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) facilitates tons of lawsuits against websites that are not accessible: https://www.rjo.com/publications/website-accessibility-lawsuits-continue-to-inundate-california-courts-despite-covid-19/

                  Typically, in website accessibility lawsuits, a visually impaired Plaintiff will allege that a company’s website is inaccessible and incompatible with screen-reading software such that the individual is denied full and equal access to the company’s website in violation of the ADA and the Unruh Act. In these cases, a Plaintiff will seek statutory damages, injunctive relief, and attorney’s fees both individually and on behalf of a class of persons similarly situated. Plaintiffs have been testing this theory of ADA liability in courts across the country for years, with New York, Florida and California being the most active.

                  Edit: here’s another good link showing a graph of the number of ADA website accessibility lawsuits from 2016 to 2025: https://www.ecomback.com/annual-2025-ada-website-accessibility-lawsuit-report

                  • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
                    1·
                    23 hours ago

                    That sounds nice. Wish we had an ADA, wouldn’t even need to change the acronym lol

      • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        1 day ago

        AI scrappers will just pretend to be screen readers then

        There’s a fair chance they’re already doing that. It provides better insight on the content, less formatting to handle, and even visual stuff gets text alternatives.

      • Sims@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        It is also very easy to detect surprising text by looking at the perplexity levels by feeding it to a very small model. If there’s a problem, OCR/‘screen read’ it instead…