WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Noscript

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Jan 18, 2010 7:51AM

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 5:04 AM, Steven Henderson wrote:

> So, recently I have started
> wrapping all my flash-alternative content inside noscript tags to prevent
> this happening.

This content would only be available to users that do not have Flash
AND javascript. So, it's not really a flash-alternative. It's a Flash
+ javascript alternative. This could result in some users getting
nothing - the many users that have Flash disabled and javascript
enabled.

> WAVE seems to have an issue with the tag, but is there more to be concerned
> with in using the tag?

What do you mean by "issue"? WAVE alerts you to the presence of
noscript content so that you can ensure it has been implemented
correctly and contains accessible content. Is there something else
going on?

I think it's been addressed, but JAWS totally ignored noscript content
for many, many years - even if javascript was disabled. In general,
noscript has nothing to do with accessibility. It is simply for
presenting alternatives to scripted content. It is NOT, as is commonly
assumed, for alternatives to inaccessible scripted content. As our
screen reader survey shows
(http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey2/#javascript), most
screen reader users have scripting enabled and will get the scripted
content.

<noscript> has generally grown out-of-fashion. It's very purpose
promotes development in ways that are neither effective, nor that
support accessibility. Instead, a progressive enhancement approach
where accessible HTML content is presented and then scripting (or, in
your case, Flash) is used to enhanced or modify that content is a
better approach. But, it seems like the Flash replacement technique
you are using doing does this - just not very well for sighted users.

I can't really make a suitable recommendation - I'm not terribly
up-to-speed with Flash replacement techniques.

Jared Smith
WebAIM