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AccesiBe and other j*script annoyances
May 14th, 2021
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For the past several weeks in my news and social media feeds, I have
seen a lot of folks complaining about AccesiBe (and its contemporaries)
... The first several days, I ignored the rants, but today I finally
decided to look into it.

AccesiBe is a javascript embedded onto web pages which does an
absolutely terrible job of "improving" the accessibility of said web
pages... It purports to automatically add ALT attributes to images,
improve focus control on web forms, automatically repair keyboard short-
cuts, and a whole bunch of other shit that is the already the job of the
browser and the end-user's accessibility software (e.g. screen reader).

AccesiBe also outright lies in its marketing by implying that its script
makes websites which embed it resistant to accessibility (e.g. US ADA-
related) lawsuits... However sites have already been sued because the
AccesiBe script often makes them /less/ accessible.

=> see: https://adrianroselli.com/2020/06/accessibe-will-get-you-sued.html

TL;DR: AccesiBe and its contemporaries are garbage, increase page load+
rendering time, and waste bandwidth.
Consequently I have decided to block that crap on my metered network,
and publish the hostnames of said javascript annoyances that I found:


acsbap.com
acsbapp.com

ws.audioeye.com
wsv3cdn.audioeye.com

api.userway.com
cdn.userway.org

fecdn.user1st.info

api.maxaccess.io
imioramoz2.execute-api.us-east-2.amazonaws.com
d5gilh1ztb0u5.cloudfront.net
d3tl8vem8osmxf.cloudfront.net

*.nagich.com
*.nagich.co.il

*.truabilities.com

hexagon-analytics.com

browser-update.org

utils.global-e.com

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Of those last three, practically every modern browser includes a built-
in nag screen when it needs to be updated, I really don't see the need
to duplicate that function in remote javascript... And I don't want to
load lame analytic crap over a metered network.

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