SEOs Make Looking The Net For The Blind Actually Dangerous…

John Mueller shared on mastodon that he met with someone who relies on screen readers to consume the web. And he explained to him how old-school SEO tricks make reading the web using screen readers, well let’s just say, not pleasant.

John wrote “Today I had a meeting with someone who relies on #screenreaders to get around online.” John said that some of the old SEO tricks like keyword stuffing and dropping alt text in small invisible images with keywords, and that type of stuff, just made it hard or impossible for those using screen readers. John said “hearing how the old-school #SEO tricks like #keyword-stuffing in #alt-text & for 1px images, and variations of hidden text (size, color, off-screen) are a part of their normal online life was pretty sad (and yes, I also made some pages like that back in the day). Just imagine what you’d think of the SEO world if that’s SEO for you…”

John did add that this person said things are getting better, he wrote “I was happy to hear that they also saw this kind of abuse declining.”

Here is a screenshot of the post:

But yea, try to download a screen reader and consume the web as if you were visually impaired. See how that goes for you…

Oh yea, I’m pretty active on Mastodon, you can follow me at c.im/@rustybrick if you want.

Forum discussion at mastodon.