The EU has a history of coming out with mad policies, such as banning curved bananas, but it may be on the cusp of an announcement that is not just mad, but dangerous to web publishers.

An intriguing email has been received here at Monetise This concerning an imminent policy directive from the EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding.

It has been suggested to me by a staffer within the Commission that an announcement will come this week - probably before Thursday - which will rule Adsense out of order and incompatible with existing EU directives on website accessibility.

A working group put together by the Commissioner are thought to have studied the usability impact of the Javascript based Adsense - invisible to most text based screen readers - and determined that differently abled web users are at a "significant disadvantage" by missing out on the products and services which are integrated "as content" into publisher sites.

My source who has seen the report says it cites the case of a partially sighted man in Austria who has not had a girlfriend in 17 months. The report's authors have been able to prove that the man would have been able to get a girlfriend had he been able to access several "e-books" on the subject that were made available to web users who could view Adsense adverts.

If it happens, this shock ruling will surely have massive ramifications for web publishers in Europe.

**Edit: That was my attempt at an April Fools by the way!!**

Labels: adsense, web accessibility