Re: DB Maintenance Design Patterns

Henrik,

I'm suffering from the same disconnect. How would disabling JavaScript help users with disabilities? How would impairing the browser improve accessibility? It doesn't make sense. If you want to help people with disabilities then provide keyboard short-cuts as alternatives to mouse events, at least when it concerns to database maintenance.

How would reloading an entire page (brochure-ware) be more accessible than using AJAX to update field values. Under the former you wait longer and consume more bandwidth. The latter is n-times more efficient.

I think that arguments can be made for using moderate amounts of JavaScript. Excessive JavaScript can impair the performance of user interfaces; make the UI appear sluggish and heavy-weight. But it doesn't make sense to eschew JavaScript altogether.

Some developers may not want to take the time and initiative to learn JavaScript. In that case, they may license a wizard to generate it; consign themselves to the constraints of the wizard.

-Nathan





----- Original Message -----
From: Henrik Rützou <hr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc:
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: [WEB400] DB Maintenance Design Patterns

Maurice,

What is it that gives an employee with a disability, or any employee for
that matter, the right to disable javascript on his work computer? And why
should they? What is the argument?

And what about HTML5 and CSS3 should there also be EU rules forbidding
using these?

I think I can speak for many that the society has to provide accessibility
for most possible people and persons with a disability has the right to be
helped in the best possible way, but that right doesn’t include the right
to refuse to use a common worldwide used and available technology - that is
a complete misunderstanding.

Javascript is an older technology than CSS and javascript is a natural
component of coding webpages as HTML rendering is and it has been it by
decades. Besides that javascript comes with all available browsers and is
an important component if you want to provide cross browser/device support
and thereby common accessibility.

Besides that javascript is activated as standard in all browsers and IMO,
anyone that deliberately adds disability to his/hers browser has only them
self to blame.

To demand EU legislation that any webpage should be able to run in any
persons f***** up browser setting (hereby disabling processing of program
code that is an international ISO/IEC industry standard) as the lowest
common denominator and then use people with a disability as the platform
for the argumentation is to me farfetched and completely taking out of
context.

The world is changing with the speed of light, yesterday we had analog
telephones, max 8bytes pr. second telegraphs from the post office, analog
data transmission and radio beacons for ship navigation, today we have
digital telephones, digital 20Mbit pr. second e-mails from our homes,
gigabyte digital data transmission and GPS satellites for the same and no
one is dreaming of producing a training or film video on VHS or Betamax
because a little stubborn nostalgic group still prefers or only has access
to that technology.

What you are arguing and suggestion is that those of us that develops
modern WEB 2.0 UI’s should start with going back several decades and
develop our base systems based on what technology was available at that
time to support users that prefers that technology and then add features to
make the system more “modern” – and that is as technologic idiotic as to
demand VW to develop a Golf VII based on a Golf I chassis from 1974 and
still get 5 stars in the current EuroNCAP standard security crash test.

In a broader sense the term “availability/accessibility” has in the resent
years got a new meaning, because who has to be available/accessible to
whom? “I want this and that, I want it today, I wanted it yesterday and I
want more tomorrow, because then my demand all has changed” doesn’t seems
to apply to the current world we live in.

Yesterday is in a technological sense not only bygones, yesterday is for
many people real bygones and those who will survive are those who manage to
adapt to the current technology and situation.

Nobody will survive making software to an IBM I and still compatible with a
System/36 5363 or a first generation browser – technological bygones has to
be bygones, so has webpages without javascript and that is where your
disability argument doesn’t  hold water.



And still the question is in the air, what is the argument for doing so?