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Re: JavaScript Question

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From: Simius Puer
Date: Sep 9, 2009 8:35AM

It's amazing how many sites still use JavaScript menus for their main
navigation without a noscript back-up. And this is a practice still used by
many so-called "professional web design companies".

I raised this as one of a heap of accessibility issues with a major public
body here in Ireland when they re-launched their site about a year back.
Their original solution was to have a "click here to go to site map" right
at the bottom of their navigation menu. This resulted in screen readers
having to read a huge nested list of links that were JavaScript controlled
before finally getting to a link that took them to the site map....that then
read the exact same list, but this time with regular links. Incidentally,
after reading just one page the only way to get back to the site map was the
back key, or to go through the above all over again.

Even sighted users users who had JavaScript off would have struggled as the
link was off the bottom of even my screen (running at a very high
resolution) so it appeared there was just navigation that went no-where.

They were great to talk to, listened and quite quickly changed it but I'm
not convinced their 'solution' was even close to ideal. Sadly their hands
were being tied by available funding.

...now I think this is a great case for bringing in the UK approach to
Government websites. I can't say it is perfect (far from it), but the
Cabinet Office mandated that all new (or re-launched) Government funded
websites be made at least AA accessible, otherwise funding would be
withdrawn. Admittedly the legislation there is a little more clear cut than
other countries, so essentially what they were doing was saying "we can not
fund websites that break disability laws". ..sadly the enforcing of this
mandate was less than stringent, but it was a brilliant idea.

Accessibility across the majority of websites is only ever going to be
achieved if a) the legislation is in place and it specifically includes
websites (and other electronic portals) and b) the Government's own websites
comply...otherwise how can they in all honesty enforce the laws.

To go back to the original question...the specific scenario in which
JavaScript might be turned off is unimportant. The thing to remember that
is wherever you use JavaScript there really should be an alternative -
unless the JavaScript is doing something that does not add functionality or
something of value to your website, in which case you really have to ask why
it is there in the first place.