WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: "no JavaScript" alternative

for

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Mar 14, 2011 7:00AM

The percentage of web users who have a tendency to turn JavaScript off are much more likely to be your advanced users, often using a tool such as the Firefox extension NoScript, who were making the choice for security or usability reasons. Some of those users will have accessibility needs, others won't. Advanced users are perfectly capable of turning JavaScript back on if the page tells them that they need to enable JavaScript in order to use the functionality. The worst pages are the ones that simply don't work without JavaScript, without telling the user the reason why. Silent failure modes in the absence of JavaScript.

Obviously if you have the resources, making the functionality work both with and without JavaScript would be preferable. But as long as the page without JavaScript TELLS the user that enable JavaScript will enable the functionality, that should be adequate for most cases.

-Deborah