this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
87 points (94.8% liked)
Programming
19982 readers
226 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No-JS pages that fully comply with WAI ARIA are much better for users of assistive technology than any single page web app can ever hope to be. All the myriad states that an interactive JS page can enter are absolutely never ever properly tested for disabled users, and even after full expensive testing, just a little change in the JS can ruin it all again. While with WAI ARIA you can just quickly assert that the page is compliant with a checker before pushing it to live.
This is both factually incorrect, and ignores the original point.
First of all, no you cannot just run an automatic WAI ARIA checker. That will highlight some surface level basic structural issues but in no way is adequate testing for a pleasant accessible UX.
Secondly, modern frameworks like React and Angular have the same ARIA validation utilities. It does not matter whether components are loaded in dynamically by the framework as long as they're defined in the codebase where linters and code analyzers can run.
Thirdly, you're ignoring the actual point that is being made. You know as well as I do, that virtually nowhere actually puts serious effort and usability testing into websites making sure their websites are accessible, and that directly impacts the lives of millions of people who are cut off from the world of technology because of a disability.
Until you're making all of your websites and apps accessible by second nature (i.e. until at a bare minimum you have your Web Accessibility Specialist certification), then focusing your time and efforts on catering to a niche ideological no JS crowd is quite frankly somewhat cruel and self serving.
If you want to learn the stuff necessary for that certification, here's a document, the WAS Body of Knowledge listing what you need to know and maybe where you can learn that. Less detailed version in the WAS Exam Content Outline.
Heh, just deleted my reply - thanks for covering all that, you're exactly right :)