Re: Browser Issues

"'Joe Clark'" <joeclark@joeclark.org>; "WAI (E-mail)" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>

The message from Joe Clark does not appear in the archives, can we find
out what is going wrong and how many other messages are being dropped?

> You also said:
>
> >The honest answer is "The requirement to be able to run without
> >JavaScript is outdated and has been superseded by the simple fact
> >that every screen reader save for OutSpoken for Macintosh sits on top
> >of IE and uses IE's own renderings, JavaScript included."
>
> Which makes me breathe a sigh of relief.  I know that there are
accessible
> ways to use Javascript,

You do?  Would you care to expand on them, people with that knowledge
seem extremely thin on the ground and
http://www.learningdifficulty.org/develop/w3c-scripts.html is always
looking for examples.

> but I have very little experience with screen
> readers.  I also agree that the requirement is outdated.  Just like
"text
> only" versions of web sites.

I disagree entirely, for a start
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20011210/html.html
says "The interfaces found within this section are not mandatory."  so we
can't rely on any DOM being in existence (beyond hasFeature ) in browsers
which fully support w3c recommendations (not that any currently do of
course.) and without a DOM - ECMAscript is wholly useless (even the w3's
DOM's require proprietary portions to be used.)

ECMAScript can certainly be used to increase accessibilty - although I'm
despairing to find a concrete significant example of this that actually
works across even the browsers I test on.

There are a great many arguments as to why not requiing ECMAScript isn't
an outdated requirement, but I see little point in advancing them when
the only suggested reason why it's ok - is that "everyone uses IE." which
is clearly preposterous.

Jim.

Joe Clark cc'd to request he reposts the message for the archives.

Received on Wednesday, 27 February 2002 06:26:59 UTC