Javascript usage, accessibility and security Re: Technical question about Javascript disabled option

(Note, this is something of a wandering rant, not very long but very  
quickly getting away from the original topic)

On Thu, 05 Oct 2017 20:05:31 +0200, David Woolley  
<forums@david-woolley.me.uk> wrote:

> On 05/10/17 18:34, Giacomo Petri wrote:
>> a WebAIM survey in 2014 reported that 97.6% of respondents had  
>> Javascript enabled
>
> The significance of this is the opposite of the obvious one.  Given the  
> vast number of sites that are unusable without Javascript enabled, it is  
> saying that there are still people who think it important not to enable  
> it.

Yes - that is quite true. However the reasons for not using javascript are  
rarely related to accessibility any more, and more to do with privacy and  
security, or occasionally performance.

There is some intersection of concerns - because of poor accessibility in  
browser's privacy and security interfaces there may be a stronger  
incentive to just turn off JS if you want enhanced security an privacy. As  
David notes, that means foregoing the ability to use many many common  
sites - a price some people are willing to pay in an attempt to improve  
their protection.

While I think there is a strong case to be made for pushing browsers to  
enhance the accessibility of security/privacy, it is a difficult argument  
in practice and not just because browsers put accessibility at a low  
priority.

The common approach over the last decade or so has been to try to ensure  
security *by default*, making it hard for users to do things that degrade  
their protection, on the assumption borne out by evidence that almost  
anything that requires users to understand security in order to protect  
themselves will effectively expose the vast majority of users. The  
consequence of this is that enhancing the ability to deal with exceptional  
cases - those who will work harder to keep more privacy or security than  
average - is a lot of work for a small segment of consumers, and will  
effectively commit developers to ongoing maintenance of the feature.  
That's already a big disincentive :(

"Further complicating" the work, to ensure that it is done with  
accessibility in mind *should* be a natural process, because accessibility  
should be a straightforward requirement for any professional, but in  
practice we are a long way from that desirable state of justice and  
professionalism. And so the reality is that few people are in a position  
to do this, and many of those people are not sure *how* to do it even if  
they think it is what they should be doing. On top of that, because in  
many cases this work is done "on the margins" - for example only when  
developers have spare time to look after something - they may not have a  
practical way of finding out what they need to know.

Some research and practical, *reproducible* work on enhancing the  
accessibility of user security and privacy would be a great thing. There  
are many browsers around, and some of the smaller ones (Brave, Vivaldi,  
Whale, ...) may be faster to improve in this area than those who are  
trying not to disturb their already large market share.

cheers

-- 
Chaals is Charles McCathie Nevile
find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Friday, 6 October 2017 10:17:36 UTC