Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Accessible scripting, or ‘unobtrusive scripting’ as we like to call it, is not a particularly new idea. The Man in Blue and our own Task Force leader Jeremy Keith have both written on the topic in the past. The former focuses on a loose division of web sites into ‘applications’ like Gmail, and ‘public information’ sites like the one you’re reading. The latter maintains that proper applicaiton of progressive enhancement will result in apps that are accessible irrespective of ECMAScript capability, albeit with somewhat reduced convenience and ‘wow’.

The progressive enhancement approach, also called the ‘accessible alternative’ approach, is indeed the most common and best-understood. It’s not the whole shooting match, though. There’s a second approach to making ECMAScript-enhanced pages accessible: direct accessibility.

Direct accessibility means ensuring that the script-enhanced bits of a page are themselves accessible to assistive technology so that disabled users are able to benefit from the convenience afforded by the enhancements. It’s a more difficult approach to be sure, and less well-understood. It’s also all but impossible for some applications, such as Google Maps. In fact, after some preliminary testing our own Derek Featherstone was so dismayed by the state of JavaScript in screen readers that he recommended screen reader users turn off JavaScript. Hardly an encouraging sign.

Still, for apps like Yahoo! Mail direct accessibility can offer a real boon to disabled users, and merits greater attention. After all, why should users of assistive technology be forced into a click-and-wait ghetto while the rest of us enjoy the convenience and speed of a well-polished scripted UI?

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