> Assistive technologies will still work as the browsers implement platform's assistive APIs.
Assistive technologies and APIs on devices should not be beholden to the platform owners. It is a problem for disabled communities to need to ask permission to build technologies that make their lives better.
Native platform accessibility APIs are important because it's important for platforms to take steps to guarantee equitable access to sites and apps on their own platforms out of the box and for ordinary users who may not want to or be able to install additional software. However, officially supported native platform accessibility APIs are NEVER an excuse to remove the autonomy and agency of disabled communities.
This shows up all the time in multiple situations -- from Reddit's exemptions of nebulously defined accessibility apps from its API pricing to circumventing assistive technologies in the name of adblocking, to the current proposal. It is an attack on the autonomy and agency of vision impaired or low-mobility users to force them to use only "approved" APIs in order to build assistive technologies or to force them to ask permission before deploying their solutions. It positions the platform as a kind of benevolent dictator, giving the platform an inappropriate level of power and control over disabled communities that should be (when possible) dismantled rather than reinforced.
I strongly disagree. Being disabled doesn't mean that you should be able to bypass the security of any system.
Also proposals like this help reduce the amount of captchas disabled users get meaning that they may have a better experience using the web if this proposal is accepted.
Correct, but only in the sense that everyone should have the right to bypass attestation checks, not just disabled users.
> proposals like this help reduce the amount of captchas disabled users get
Citation needed. Chrome's implementation of this API ties directly in the Play Integrity API. I am skeptical that style of attestation will have any measurable impact on the ability to automate requests from an Android phone, and I am skeptical that websites will actually reduce captchas rather than just add attestation requirements alongside them.
Even if it did reduce captchas (which to be clear, it probably won't) disability accommodation should not be conditional. Low vision and low mobility users who run custom ROMs also deserve to access the web. If the level of captchas that are thrown in front of low vision users are problematic or inaccessible, that's a conversation we need to have about captchas more generally. It's not an excuse to restrict those users' autonomy over their computers.