RE: Any examples of <NOSCRIPT>?

The Australian Open Tennis Championship's website - http://www.ausopen.com.au
- used noscript to provide access to various features of the site. This may
have been a response to the findings of the Human Rights and Equal
opportunity Commission in a complaint about the Sydney Olympic Games Website,
which required Javascript in order to get to certain parts of the site.
(Originally to get to any of it, but that was changed very early on).

My view is that this (and several similar exercises) did improve the
accessibility of the Website.

In the example discussed below, they are providing the content that would
have been delivered via a javascript, when there is no active javascript
interpreter. (And they are explaining that why it comes in diffferent forms
on diferent viewings of the site is becuase javascript is not active in some
cases - also helpful.) So I think they are providing accessibility - access
to the content for people who do not have javascript enabled, for example
becuase their browser does not support it, or because (as with a number of
people) it interferes with orientation and they leave it off by default.

Cheers

Charles McCN

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Jim Thatcher wrote:

  I don't understand how you can say that they are providing "equivalent
  content" with their NOSCRIPT tag. The NOSCRIPT content says that when you
  leave the site with scripting enabled you will get an alert. You don't get
  that alert when scripting is turned off. The scripting content is the alert.

  It does NOT provide that "alert" content in alternative form --- or I am
  missing what you are trying to say?

  Please note, I do not think the site has accessibility problems; my
  assertion on this, so far the only real life NOSCRIPT instance, is that
  accessibility is NOT improved with the NOSCRIPT content.

  Jim
  jim@jimthatcher.com
  Accessibility Consulting
  http://jimthatcher.com
  512-306-0931

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Kynn Bartlett [mailto:kynn@reef.com]
  Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 7:48 PM
  To: jim@jimthatcher.com; W3c-Wai-Ig@W3. Org
  Subject: RE: Any examples of <NOSCRIPT>?


  At 05:24 PM 2/20/2001, Jim Thatcher wrote:
  >I really didn't expect any, and good for you for finding a "real life" use
  >of NOSCRIPT. This one at http://www.section508.gov, of all places, is
  >certainly real life and it is effective. What it does is provide text at
  the
  >top of the page that in effect says "we use JavaScript for XYZ and since
  you
  >don't support JavaScript you are out of lunch as regards XYZ."

  Actually I am not entirely sure it says that.  It looks like they
  are trying to say "if you had javascript, you'd see <x>, but since
  you don't, we will tell you the content you are missing; in other
  words, the content of the popup."

  >I really think that is kind of an ingenious idea. "We're using JavaScript
  >and you don't get the benefit of it, so TOUGH!"

  Hmmm.  I've seen sites that do that, I don't think this is the case
  though.  I think they are trying to do it right, even though I think
  they don't do it particularly well.

  >I guess I would say the instance is certainly not ideal. The prescription
  >for NOSCRIPT is that authors will provide alternate content when scripting
  >is not available. This example does not do that because I read "alternate"
  >do be in some sense equivalent.
  >Do you agree?

  Not really.  I think they are well-meaning but they did not consider
  overall usability, just accessibility.  Surely this does indeed provide
  the content in an alternate form; it's just awful clumsy.  I think a
  better idea would have been for them to provide the same functionality
  in a different way; for example, making each link go to the page in
  question with a pop-up (as now) if javascript is enabled, and making
  it go to an "exit page" if javascript is not enabled.  That might
  work better than this <noscript> message, which I honestly would have
  put somewhere near the bottom of the page.  But at least they allow
  you to skip it, I think.

  --Kynn


  --
  Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
  Technical Developer Liaison
  Customer Management/Edapta
  Reef North America
  Tel +1 949-567-7006
  _____________________________________
  ALL YOUR BUSINESS ARE BELONG TO US.
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-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2001 22:22:40 UTC