> I recommend the follows ...

Yeah, that won't work either and I'll tell you how I know.

Anecdote 1:

Almost everyone who uses a computer has encountered a EULA that one must click-through. We all ignore it and click "OK" or "I Agree" anyways, right?

Recently, I've encountered a few that won't let you proceed until you really have "read" it. They "enforce" that by not letting you click-through until you've scrolled down to the bottom of the textbox. The first time I encountered this it took a split-second to figure out, I hit Ctrl-End, and <TAB>'d over to "OK".

I thought about for a minute then hit "Back" a couple of times. I handed the laptop over to Stephanie, who was sitting next to me on the couch. "Hey, install this real quick for me while I run to the bathroom", I told her.

When I came back a moment later she says, "That was weird." "What?" "I had to click the scroll thing on the license all the way to the bottom before it would let me install." "That is weird," I said. "What'd the license say?"

She gave me a "are-you-serious?-like-i-actually-read-that" look and my experiment was complete. She's certainly more technical than most people but I'd wager that my mother (who certainly isn't) would also quickly figure out to simply scroll to the bottom to bypass it without actually having to read it.

Anecdote 2:

Several years ago, my then-fiancée, was required to take a four-hour online "driver education" course because she had received greater than "x" citations in "y" time.

For each section, you had to read a wall of text and then answer several questions afterwards. You were required to spend "x" amount of time reading it -- you couldn't proceed to the questions until that time had passed.

Lindsey just sat on the couch watching episodes of one of her shows on the DVR and every few minutes she'd look over at her laptop, click to the next page, and answer the questions. She didn't bother reading any of the text and once she got to the next section, she'd sit the laptop back down and go back to watching her show. At the next convenient break in her show, she'd click "Proceed" and answer the questions. Rinse and repeat.

Anecdote 3:

I worked at a .edu for several years and also taught many courses during my time there. On a few occasions, in the middle of a random block of text in a paper that I would hand out for the students to read and answer a few questions over, I would insert something like "draw a peace sign next to your name for 10 bonus points".

What I was interested in is whether they were actually reading the paper or simply jumping straight to the questions, reading the question and then quickly skimming the paper to try to find the answers. I didn't keep statistics but I'd say that perhaps 10-15% of the students would get the bonus points on a good day.

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Now all of these are anecdotal, sure, but I think it illustrates quite well that us humans are quite capable of finding ways around whatever roadblocks stand in the way of whatever we want. In recent years, it seems that humans in general have become more obsessed with instant gratification (I am certainly guilty of this) and/or we've just become lazy.

When I was in school, I did not want to spend an hour reading a paper when I could instead jump straight to the questions, skim over the paper in search of the answers, and be done in 10 minutes either.

In short, I don't think there is any foolproof way of completely ensuring that someone reads a document. Don't underestimate fools. =)