The only problem with the conspiracy theory is that too many folks are
using JavaScript.  Many are doing it because they can, not because it
lets them do things that really need to do.  But, it is clear that
JavaScript is here, and isn't going away any time soon.

There are really three different platforms in the world for accessing
the Web: Windows, Mac, and Unix/Linux.  Two of these, Mac and Windows,
can support JavaScript when used with graphical browsers.  Plain text
browsers don't support JavaScript because most of what JavaScript does
has a graphical component.  Likewise, text based browsers don't support
CSS.  That doesn't make either the browsers or the technologies bad.  It
just means that they don't work together.

Good design requires that the *information* of a site be available even
when features like JavaScript are not supported.  That is why there is a
"No Script" tag as part of the JavaScript spec.  The fact that many
people don't use it, or use it only to display text that says "you can't
use this site with your browser" is not a problem with JavaScript, any
more than the fact that people hit their thumbs with hammers means that
hammers are defective.

JavaScript lets designers do things they can't do without it.  Most of
what they do is visual, but most of their users are visual, too.  It's
not bad to cater to visual users, unless in so doing you block those who
are non-visual, or non-graphical.

Denis Anson, MS, OTR
Computer Access Specialist
College Misericordia
301 Lake St.
Dallas, PA 18612
email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: 570-674-6413


> -----Original Message-----
> From: * EASI: Equal Access to Software & Information
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martin G. McCormick
> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 5:12 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Javascript and Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility
>
>         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