My interpretation is that they would be free to give the text-only version to EU residents unilaterally, but not to make formatting tied to tracking consent, as tracking is not functionally necessary for formatting.
As an extreme example, I don't think Youtube could have "yes, track me and let me watch the video" and "no, read text transcript of video" as options and claim equivalency.
> For some people this is desirable, but for others it may not be.
In principle yes, but I have a hard time believing the NPR text-only site was designed for usefulness.
E.g., articles like [1] still contain all the inter-article links of the original - however, instead of linking to the text-only versions of those articles (which would be the reasonable thing to do if you're already on a text-only article) they try to get you back to the full version.
Worse still, if you decline, you get directed back to the front page. There is actually no way to follow the links of the articles without either URL hacking or agreeing to be tracked.
Additionally, the text-only front page only gives access to the latest headlines - no access to archives or even just a search function. So again, without getting a link from anywhere else or URL hacking, it's not possible to do anything else than view the latest headlines.