HTML techniques - What happened to Javascript techniques? (no blocker)

One thing I find very important in making pages accessible is graceful
degradation when visitors don't support certain techniques (CSS, Javascript,
Java, plugins, whatever). 

A level 2 success criteria to this point can be found in Guideline 4.3:
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/#declare-technology>

However, I don't see any techniques for this in the HTML techniques
document. 

There are several techniques to ensure the page is still operable if the
user agent doesn't support certain techniques (or when they are disabled by
the user).

One such technique would be to always include the link to a document in the
href of an anchor:
<a href="site.html" onclick="window.open(this.href)"> instead of using the #
as href where the link is in the Javascript only: <a href="#"
onclick="window.open('site.html')">

Another frequent mistake that can be easily prevented is drop-down menus,
which only work when Javascript is enabled. This isn't too bad, as long as
the main items, which trigger the dropdown-menus, are hyperlinks to a page
that includes all the subitems. See http://www.en.nationaalarchief.nl for an
example. The main navigation uses dropdown menus when Javascript is enabled,
but the main navigation items are also links to an introductory page where
all the links to subcategories are available.

I think techniques like these should be included in a techniques document. I
don't know that the HTML techniques document is the place for this. Will
there be a Javascript techniques document? If not, the HTML techniques
document might be the best place for them.

Yvette Hoitink
CEO Heritas, Enschede, The Netherlands

Received on Friday, 31 October 2003 11:36:47 UTC