Re: National Library of Australia

Here is my argument for why non-Javascript interfaces are important, for 
reasons in addition to  visually impared browsers.

http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/javascript-and-accessibilty/


I have absolutely no problem with making use of Javascript in your 
interface, but think it's important that the interface degrade 
reasonably without javascript.  As per David's point about loading 
computationally intensive output later, you can still do that without 
javascript too of course, you just provide a link that when clicked will 
load that stuff.  Can be a bit harder to write the software to support 
doing this both ways, but I think it's important, and if you're 
application platform is good in the first place it shouldn't be too hard.

Jonathan

Walker, David wrote:
>> what's the problem with handing some work to
>> the browser if the interface is designed to be 
>> accessed over the Web?
>>     
>
> Nothing --  unless the screen reading software your visually impaired users are using cannot read part of the page because it's being loaded into the browser in a way that the screen reader can't recognize it.
>
> The reason why so many of these systems use JavaScript (and AJAX techniques in particular) is because tasks like calculating facets and looking-up availability in the ILS are resource-intensive.  Performing those functions asynchronously after the page loads speeds things up considerably.
>
> JavaScript and ADA compliance are not mortal enemies, though.  You can have your cake and eat it too.  But it seems that many, if not most, 'next-generation' catalog systems implement Javascript without regard to accessibility considerations.
>
> --Dave
>
> ==================
> David Walker
> Library Web Services Manager
> California State University
> http://xerxes.calstate.edu
> ________________________________________
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kyle Banerjee [kyle.banerjee_at_GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 9:42 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] National Library of Australia
>
>   
>> Anyone wonder why all of these 'discovery' platforms are completely dependent upon javascript and why the developers think that's OK?
>>
>>     
>
> Just out of curiosity, what's the problem with handing some work to
> the browser if the interface is designed to be accessed over the Web?
>
> kyle
>
>