Javascript is a cure for which there was no known disease
until it came along.  It was cranked out by the Internet
Explorer/Netscape camps with a version of javascript for each.
This left the generic standards-based browsers like lynx out in
the cold.  One almost has to use either Internet Explorer or
Netscape and both those require Windows.  UNIX users can use
Netscape or Mozilla, but those require X-windows.  While
X-windows is not proprietary, it is extremely complex and there
is no speech synthesizer access to it at all right now although
several groups have worked on the problem and something happen
one day with the gnome project, but the fact is there is no way
to use X with screen reading technology at this time.

        Therefore, UNIX users right now have two equally bad
choices in the man-made Hell that passes for web access these
days.

        We can just do without on the ever-increasing number of
javascript-infested sites or we can start shoveling money and
learning time in to a technology that we don't want which is
outrageously expensive and utterly wasteful of computing
resources.

        I have never been too hot on conspiracy theories because
it is hard to get people to work that closely together, but to
say that javascript is okay from an access standpoint legitimizes
bad technology that almost forces extremely complex solutions
over more simple technologies that are based on open standards
and can be made to work in a variety of non-standard situations.

        I can almost hear the commercial crowd rubbing their
hands with glee and saying, "We've got'em now."

Martin McCormick