HACKER Q&A
📣 thex10

Research on usage of text-only versions of websites?


I discovered the text-only version of NPR today and of course that type of news presentation is nothing new [1].

I’m wondering if there’s any analytics or research on how popular or useful these kinds of pages are? I’d love to make a business case for making one of these pages for our site.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15997349

Previously: Text-only websites discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23626929 Crowdsourced text-only faves: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13337948 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17787816 Another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544259

  👤 retrac Accepted Answer ✓
Plain simple text sites (Hacker News is a good example) have one great feature: they're inherently far more accessible to those with disabilities, particularly those who rely on screenreaders or text magnification or similar. Of course, following proper web standards could make the flashiest of sites accessible. But simple paragraphs of text, links, and lists, survive automatic mangling most of the time, whatever the target format is. You'd be reaching a significant population there that's often excluded. (It may be of regulatory compliance relevance, too.)
👤 o8r3oFTZPE
If you make a test page, then post it to HN, perhaps we can provide some "demonstrable popularity" to give you some data to present for your business case. :)

I am a heavy text-only web user. In fact, I view all sites that way with a text-only browser. I do not use lynx or w3m. Its so easy to generate simple web pages for text-only viewing. I have the process automated. I do not understand why web developers argue "it's not worth it". The developer time needed to generate such pages is close to zero.

👤 freediver
Analyzing data from usage would be like how Mozilla analyzes data from telemetry, where all the power users have telemetry turned off. Similarly, users using these kind of websites are not expected to be a part of online surveys or research.

Treat this as an accessability issue. Having this option will simply make your site more accessible.

👤 danielmarkbruce
I would pay extra for a txt only version of the Wall Street Journal....