Hacker News Reader

Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

"Standards" written by the same groups who want to control every aspect of your online life by shoving JS down everyone's throat?

Of course they'll redefine "accessibility" to further their goals...

View on HN

No, accessibility is already defined as a legal concept that has been around since before the advent of the Internet, because it also applies to our physical infrastructure.

What I'm saying is the "legal concept" is clearly not enough to stop the insanity that is modern web developent.

There's a really big gap between claiming that modern web development goes too far and runs far too much code and is much too bloated and claiming all sites that require javascript are "not accessible." You may as well go into shouty rants about the use of color because you refuse to stop using a monochrome terminal.

It wasn't always like this. Look at WCAG version 1.0 [0] section 6.3. It's very sensible advice. Then through the magic of "Web 2.0" and bigco work on "Accessible Rich Internet Applications" the advice was made to disappear [1].

Nowadays when you mention the issue on the web, instead of trying to understand and imagine low-powered devices, limited browsers, restricted environments, or maybe just security-concious people who are effectively disabled by this "Web 2.0" bullshit, people claim that you're using the term "accessibility" wrong.

[0] https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/ [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/

Note the title of that section:

> Ensure that pages are accessible even when newer technologies are not supported or are turned off.

Makes perfect sense to put JS in there in 1999, but it can hardly be considered a "newer technology" now.

I wonder what makes people so eager to push back on such a simple request, to make basic functionality available without JavaScript. In GitHub's case, they only recently screwed it up in a major way, so surely it shouldn't be a big deal to add back the functionality?

Is it "frontend programmers" feeling hurt? Or business types who think it hurts their telemetry channels? Do their salaries depend on it? Or perhaps it's just people who just need to disapprove of someone else's preferences?

It's a simple request. Yes, more than 99% of your users use JavaScript, are not blind or deaf, have reasonably fast links, powerful machines, large enough screens, don't mind updating their browser every week (very important! security matters _so much_ when you regularly run arbitrary code), etc.

So I'm in the 1%... why do so many people feel such a strong need to tell me this issue of mine is a non-issue for everybody else?

> In GitHub's case, they only recently screwed it up in a major way, so surely it shouldn't be a big deal to add back the functionality?

Unless you're under the impression that websites are only requiring JavaScript out of spite, it seems like it would be a pretty big deal.

> why do so many people feel such a strong need to tell me this issue of mine is a non-issue for everybody else?

Because it's self-imposed, your justification involved calling JavaScript a "newer technology", and people tend not to react well to the belief that "I don't want to run JavaScript" is comparable to disability.

I don't know how much programming experience you have, but let me tell you that bringing back an HTML dropdown menu is not a big deal. I don't know about "spite", but I would say it's either an oversight, or incompetence, or some grander goal to force JavaScript on their users for what could be termed "business-related reasons".

You picked up on "newer technology" as if it's pertinent to the matter. It is not. This usability checkpoint is still 100% valid today. I gave reference to that document to show that the matter is related to accessibility, and to provide evidential support to userbinator's view that the term has been hijacked by the web giants and munged up to exclude whatever is inconvenient to them.

You, like others in this thread, bring "disability" and "self-imposition" to this discussion. I dare you to imagine a world where not everybody who wishes to make basic use of GitHub is able, even if willing, to run JavaScript in every conceivable context. Can you imagine such a world? In this totally imaginary world this inaccessibility is not self-imposed. Given such a world, would you be willing to accept that my simple request is reasonable?

You are seeing the true nature of corporate greed and control show its ugly face. The end-game is clear: one browser controlled by one company, of great complexity and continuously changed to discourage others from attempting to compete, shaping websites to that one company's desires. Of course everything will be "standard" and "open", but that hardly matters.

One company has clearly invested a lot into the "JS only" propaganda and strongly attempts to silence the opposition. Turning all sites into ridiculously overcomplex "web apps" that only work in their very latest browser is their dream. It's obvious that a simple text-only or even text+images browser is not all that complex, so from that perspective, basic HTML and browsers that can handle it is a threat --- and cutting those off by making sites not work in them is the ultimate underhanded tactic. They can cheer all they want about "moving the web forward" --- and unfortunately a lot of the "young and impressionable" gets caught up in that propaganda --- but what they are really doing is helping this company further its control over the Internet.

This company is, of course, Google.

Don't forget the endless stream of security updates, bundled up with whatever new UI/tracking/arbitrariness they want to force upon you. After all, the world wide web is a dangerous place, and your data is at risk. Don't you trust us to keep you safe? As if you had a choice.

> I wonder what makes people so eager to push back on such a simple request, to make basic functionality available without JavaScript.

I think it's as simple as the fact that your simple request isn't important to them, but you demand it as though you are owed a javascript-free web experience. "I am not doing that because I don't want to" is a perfectly good answer to your demands. It really doesn't matter how easy it would be for them to provide it. They're also probably not providing RSS, though you may want them to, and that would be easy too. Sorry your pet thing is not prioritized.

Personally, I think a small amount of client-side scripting can vastly improve a user experience, and way too much client-side scripting can vastly deter from it. It's a balance that each site must strike. And the effort they must go through to test and support all functionality while also supporting completely disabling javascript is definitely nonzero. Some sites won't find that effort worth it. That's the breaks. I can tell you that I never, ever intend to put any effort into supporting a no-javascript user experience on anything I build in the future. I could almost see rendering an alternate page that says "you no-JS kooks aren't gonna be happy here" but even that is more effort than I care to expend on a militant userbase that's likely to also take exception to some silly shit like my html not being semantic enough.

Are you working for GitHub? If not, nobody asked you anything. That you are taking such offense at my simple request that you have to create a "non-JS kook" personality type to satisfy your vindictive feelings is mystifying. Try to improve yourself.

> Are you working for GitHub? If not, nobody asked you anything.

I think you've somewhat misunderstood the purpose of a public forum.

To answer your question, I don't work at GitHub. And I really don't take offense to your simple request, but I do find it interesting how vehemently you are making your "simple request." I also don't think it's unreasonable to turn off JS. What I do think is unreasonable is turning off JS and then getting angry over the fact that few other people care about this scenario.

> Try to improve yourself.

Trying all the time, thanks for the reminder.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com