Accessibility and JavaScript are not mutually exclusive. Haven't been for years (although it seems difficult to persuade the "experts" that specialised user agents have progressed beyond Lynx). But that's not the argument I'm making -- I'm saying that everything that CAN be done in the client (keeping in mind both client capability and data security) SHOULD be done in the client. Putting the onus back on the server is exactly the same wrong-headed philosophy that reduces seating on buses by forty percent, doubles transit operating costs and makes scheduling impossible by failing to use the simple, (relatively) cheap and effective expedient of operating parallel systems for persons with mobility problems. (And lest anyone go off on a "you don't understand" tirade, I spend rather a lot of my time with canes, a walker, or in a wheelchair, depending on how much mobility my injured spine allows me on a given day -- I like to be as unencumbered and "normal" as I can be. Nobody should have to be late for work because I need to be in a chair today.) You can't achieve fairness by handicapping the undisabled (the "Harrison Bergeron" approach), so if you're going to go to all of the trouble to bust out of the Domino mould, then you might as well do it for a really good reason. The "special bus" only needs to be there for the people who need it.
Accessibility and JavaScript are not mutually exclusive. Haven't been for years (although it seems difficult to persuade the "experts" that specialised user agents have progressed beyond Lynx). But that's not the argument I'm making -- I'm saying that everything that CAN be done in the client (keeping in mind both client capability and data security) SHOULD be done in the client. Putting the onus back on the server is exactly the same wrong-headed philosophy that reduces seating on buses by forty percent, doubles transit operating costs and makes scheduling impossible by failing to use the simple, (relatively) cheap and effective expedient of operating parallel systems for persons with mobility problems. (And lest anyone go off on a "you don't understand" tirade, I spend rather a lot of my time with canes, a walker, or in a wheelchair, depending on how much mobility my injured spine allows me on a given day -- I like to be as unencumbered and "normal" as I can be. Nobody should have to be late for work because I need to be in a chair today.) You can't achieve fairness by handicapping the undisabled (the "Harrison Bergeron" approach), so if you're going to go to all of the trouble to bust out of the Domino mould, then you might as well do it for a really good reason. The "special bus" only needs to be there for the people who need it.