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You can use most websites with javascript disabled just fine. In fact, it generally greatly improves your experience. Thanks to the ADA, American sites (or sit

You can use most websites with javascript disabled just fine. In fact, it generally greatly improves your experience. Thanks to the ADA, American sites (or sites that do a lot of business with America) must work with assistive technologies, mainly web browsers designed for the blind. Most of those do not run js. So, you cannot design your website so that it doesn't work with js disabled, unless you are willing to expose yourself to massive legal liability. People used to ignore this a lot, but since Domino’s Pizza v. Guillermo Robles, most sites have been fixed so that they are usable without js. I strongly recommend getting ublock, blocking all js by default, and then whitelisting sites where it is required/useful. It's hard to overstate just how much better it makes browsing in general.

EvanAnderson 6y ago
You don't have to sell me. I've had Javascript disabled by default for a couple of years now. I love it. I'm a technical person. I can handle (and have the patience for) fidgeting with settings to get sites to work. My non-technical friends and family can't do that. Trying to impose that upon them would just frustrate them (and, for my family, increase tech support calls to me). All my banking and insurance sites are useless w/o Javascript. Squarespace sites, Twitter, Imgur, don't work worth a damn without Javascript. I just gave up and mostly gave Google properties a pass to get Youtube to work. (I don't use Gmail so I have no idea how bad it would be.) A site better be pretty damned compelling before it rises to the level of getting opened in an unconstrained browser setting. I just end up not opening a lot of stuff (or just closing it again when it lights-up "NoScript").
dumpsterdiver 6y ago
Since it's relevant, here's a very lightweight javascript toggle I made for Chrome a while back. I still use it every day. No data is sent anywhere, and no unnecessary permissions are required. The code is very simple and easy to validate, in case you're one of those paranoid people like me who insists on looking. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/js-toggle/bnhjfamolmolljikdopibpabimjfellc https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/js-toggle/bnhjfamo...
throwaway201103 6y ago
As an aside, I thought that the Domino’s Pizza v. Guillermo Robles decision was strange. Domino's Pizza stores are local brick-and-mortar operations. They all have telephones and take orders by telephone. That to me would seem to be a "reasonable accomodation" for a vision-impared person who could not use the website to order a pizza. In the more general sense, a strictly online service that has no alternate means of access probably does have at least some responsibility under the ADA.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  If it was simply a case of ordering over the phone, Dominos would’ve been fine. The problem was that they had “online only” coupons and their website and app weren’t “ADA friendly”. It’s more complicated than it seemed on the surface (like the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit)
sterlind 6y ago
Domino's vs. Robles doesn't say you can't use JS. no court ever ordered Domino's to do anything, afaict. all they did was affirm that Robles was allowed to sue Domino's under the ADA (without deciding whether their site was in fact accessible or not.) See http://georgemauer.net/2019/11/04/dominos-v-robles.html http://georgemauer.net/2019/11/04/dominos-v-robles.html for a good breakdown of the rulings. In particular, Robles wanted the court to order Domino's to make their site WCAG-2.0 compliant. WCAG is completely silent on JavaScript. It's possible that some screen readers don't support JavaScript, but if Domino's site used ARIA tags and complied with WCAG the court would almost certainly consider that accessible (there's no official DoJ guidelines on what constitutes accessibility, so the court and businesses have latitude here.) The ADA is all about reasonable accomodations. Supporting major screen readers is reasonable; supporting all of them clearly isn't. 98% of screen reader users have JS enabled (https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/#javascript https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/#javascript), so it's clearly reasonable to provide an accessible webapp.

EvanAnderson 6y ago

You don't have to sell me. I've had Javascript disabled by default for a couple of years now. I love it. I'm a technical person. I can handle (and have the patience for) fidgeting with settings to get sites to work. My non-technical friends and family can't do that. Trying to impose that upon them would just frustrate them (and, for my family, increase tech support calls to me). All my banking and insurance sites are useless w/o Javascript. Squarespace sites, Twitter, Imgur, don't work worth a damn without Javascript. I just gave up and mostly gave Google properties a pass to get Youtube to work. (I don't use Gmail so I have no idea how bad it would be.) A site better be pretty damned compelling before it rises to the level of getting opened in an unconstrained browser setting. I just end up not opening a lot of stuff (or just closing it again when it lights-up "NoScript").

dumpsterdiver 6y ago

Since it's relevant, here's a very lightweight javascript toggle I made for Chrome a while back. I still use it every day. No data is sent anywhere, and no unnecessary permissions are required. The code is very simple and easy to validate, in case you're one of those paranoid people like me who insists on looking. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/js-toggle/bnhjfamolmolljikdopibpabimjfellc https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/js-toggle/bnhjfamo...

throwaway201103 6y ago

As an aside, I thought that the Domino’s Pizza v. Guillermo Robles decision was strange. Domino's Pizza stores are local brick-and-mortar operations. They all have telephones and take orders by telephone. That to me would seem to be a "reasonable accomodation" for a vision-impared person who could not use the website to order a pizza. In the more general sense, a strictly online service that has no alternate means of access probably does have at least some responsibility under the ADA.

colejohnson66 6y ago
If it was simply a case of ordering over the phone, Dominos would’ve been fine. The problem was that they had “online only” coupons and their website and app weren’t “ADA friendly”. It’s more complicated than it seemed on the surface (like the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit)

sterlind 6y ago

Domino's vs. Robles doesn't say you can't use JS. no court ever ordered Domino's to do anything, afaict. all they did was affirm that Robles was allowed to sue Domino's under the ADA (without deciding whether their site was in fact accessible or not.) See http://georgemauer.net/2019/11/04/dominos-v-robles.html http://georgemauer.net/2019/11/04/dominos-v-robles.html for a good breakdown of the rulings. In particular, Robles wanted the court to order Domino's to make their site WCAG-2.0 compliant. WCAG is completely silent on JavaScript. It's possible that some screen readers don't support JavaScript, but if Domino's site used ARIA tags and complied with WCAG the court would almost certainly consider that accessible (there's no official DoJ guidelines on what constitutes accessibility, so the court and businesses have latitude here.) The ADA is all about reasonable accomodations. Supporting major screen readers is reasonable; supporting all of them clearly isn't. 98% of screen reader users have JS enabled (https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/#javascript https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/#javascript), so it's clearly reasonable to provide an accessible webapp.