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Are users who disable javascript (which are low in number) a topic for accessibility? To make everything accessible without javascript is more time consuming than to make site compatible for IE6.

My question is actually how many people keeps javascript disabled in browser, and if it's very low percentage in the work then why do we need to make site compatible without javascript. What does WCAG 2.0 say about this?

I want to know other opinions on this issue.

See what is written in this article

With WCAG 2, “Don’t use x” is no longer valid. (Was it ever?) It is now up to you, the developer, to work on the direct accessibility of your content, no matter what technology you choose. I believe we’re about to experience a new wave of accessible design techniques, as a result.

brennanyoung
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Jitendra Vyas
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    Check out the related discussion here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1267175/is-graceful-degradation-in-the-absence-of-javascript-still-useful/1267295 – Mark Nov 18 '09 at 05:52
  • @Mark Hammonds +1 for this link. yes it has ueful information for me – Jitendra Vyas Nov 18 '09 at 05:54

5 Answers5

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IMHO, yes. And not just because of Javascript, or lack thereof. If you site relies on visual tricks and manipulation (a lot of menus, drag-and-drop, soft pop-ups) it is not accessible to blind or nearly-blind people. If it relies too much on color differentiation, it might moss the color-blind. Etc.

Rule of thumb: If you want to be totally accessible, see how easy it is to navigate your site through Lynx.

Hopefully I understood your question correctly.

Traveling Tech Guy
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  • Whilst better than nothing, using Lynx isn't representative at all of how screenreader (or other assistive technology) users use websites. – FinnNk Nov 20 '09 at 22:08
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The biggest problem with javascript is that if you manipulate the dom the user might not be aware that anything has happened. In general use progressive enhancement to keep everyone happy.

Don't decide not to use things like AJAX though, for the small number of people who have difficulties with it you'll make your site harder (to the point of being unusable) for the much larger number of people with cognitive difficulties. The key is to make it work for everyone (including robots) not break it for one group in order to get it working for a different group.

FinnNk
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  • Recent versions of Jaws have pretty good support for ajax, but you need to make sure that as the dom updates are occurring they are communicated meaningfully to the user. I'm afraid the only way to really check this to test in a screenreader. – FinnNk Nov 21 '09 at 12:26
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The use of javascript does not make a site inaccessible to screen readers depending on how it's used. Stackoverflow is accessible even though it uses javascript, when I up or down vote a question I'm not notifyed that the score of the question has changed, but if I reread the question I can tell the score has changed. Things that would make a site inaccessible to screen readers while using javascript would include drawing on the canvas element, requiring certain areas of a graphic to be clicked in order to acomplish a task, creating charts with no text descriptions, etc.

Jared
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Noscript is worth mentioning here as something that can selectively block Javascript so there can be some advanced users that block scripts. Cross-site Scripting may cause more people to have add-ons like Noscript so it isn't as isolated as it used to be.

JB King
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I really think this question is more about the validity of progressive enhancement.

If you think progressive enhancement is a good thing, then it's also a good thing for accessibility.

If you think a site is not properly designed without progressive enhancement, then it's also not properly accessible.

Progressive enhancement 'fundamentalists' are in the minority, even in the accessibility community, but their arguments are strong, and worth considering, even if you end up compromising them

WCAG does not require or mandate javaScript, but it does require that any accessibility implementation is actually usable by real users in the real world. The jargon they use to describe this is "accessibly supported". I can imagine situations where an implementation requiring javaScript to do the most basic things (like navigate the site, or browse the content) is not sufficient to earn this label. This would be a problem.

I know of at least one accessibility-focused website which (for polemical reasons) sometimes requires javaScript to be disabled. The site has a video on progressive enhancement which might be informative.

And a heads-up: The Accessibility Object Model (AOM) is currently being developed by Google, Apple and Mozilla - this is is a javaScript API which will allow developers to manipulate the accessibility tree directly without messing around with markup attributes.

Accessibility features achieved via AOM alone will (by definition) not work with javaScript disabled. I expect this will change expectations about the value of progressive enhancement for accessibility.

brennanyoung
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