Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Text-Mode News Sites

I have been reading news on the CNN website rather more than usual recently and find the experience less than enjoyable (especially on my phone) due to the autoloading videos and annoying ads. It turns out that there's a solution. 

CNN has a text-only version of their website. Open the page and you get only a list of hyperlinked stories. Each story opens in a text-only page. It's wonderful.

NPR has an equivalent text-only site that works exactly the same way. 

I assume that these sites were created for visually-impaired users who rely on screen readers or for users with severe bandwidth limitations.

This page has a list of news sites that have text-only versions as well as instructions on how to use your browser's reader mode (assuming your browser has one). 

I am surprised that more major sites don't have text-only versions. It would be simple enough to set up in a content management system. They could even include text-only ads. 

Thanks to the excellent Recomendo newsletter for the tip.


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