Fortunately, I think we can dictate that JavaScript has to be enabled (I think). Do you have any idea who the folks without JavaScript support are?
Well, at the very least, many users with visual disabilities. And you've got mandates from various governments that web software needs to be mindful of accessibility.
I'm not seeing any evidence that any of the new flash-bang Javascript UI libraries like Sproutcore are being built with accessibility in mind and it's not something that you can readily bolt on afterwards. Screen readers are currently pretty crummy at noticing the page has changed after a javascript event has fired so it's up to the developer to build semantically and accessibly first and then layer on the sexy interactivity.
At least on the desktop an app can rely on the OS's built-in accessibility functionality.
by Nick Caldwell — Aug 03
Well, at the very least, many users with visual disabilities. And you've got mandates from various governments that web software needs to be mindful of accessibility.
I'm not seeing any evidence that any of the new flash-bang Javascript UI libraries like Sproutcore are being built with accessibility in mind and it's not something that you can readily bolt on afterwards. Screen readers are currently pretty crummy at noticing the page has changed after a javascript event has fired so it's up to the developer to build semantically and accessibly first and then layer on the sexy interactivity.
At least on the desktop an app can rely on the OS's built-in accessibility functionality.