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Comment by forgotmypw17 | Hacker News Reader

There are more than a dozen perfectly useful browsers with recent releases, some of which have no provisions for css or js. And i'm going to go through the effort to support them, because they are valid. My baseline is bend over backwards to accommodate every user on every browser, configuration, and network. Anything else is just plain uncivilized, like building a museum without wheelchair ramps because only 0.01% use wheelchairs.

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> some of which have no provisions for css or js. And i'm going to go through the effort to support them, because they are valid

i wish this would catch on (or even be a mandated accessibility requirement) and every website could have this kind of ultimate compatibility/fallback mode to pure html.

0. Country/state legislators starts discussing mandatory html version for static content.

1. Some website (not « webapps ») start providing an html only version.

2. First users wave engage: plenty of hn readers , others techies, people with disabilities. Some news enthusiasts find it useful to consume articles (and the web !) as a simple and peacefull content browsing way.

3. First wave share their enthusiasm. Others sites catch up. Second wave with people from all sides, including:

4. PM, advertisers, marketers, businessmans… all at them have different opinions about this. However those who have direct or indirect interests with online advertising also fear kpis decrease.

5. A bunch of ad lobbyist flood the legislators. End of legislation discussion.

Step 5 seems like an uphill battle. I suspect it will be more like, gradual extension of the new standard to support advertiser-beloved features, to the point that the original upsides of the standard are broken, as users have to keep chasing feature support.

My earlier comments on this dynamic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30727672

Respect to you! This might sound ridiculous to some but is honestly my personal ideal as well.

I have found it hard to achieve in real world settings. The PM wants to know how many visitors aren’t enabling JS before we dare justify any effort towards supporting that case, for example.

i'd assume that wheelchair visitors are usually <1% and hence argue that it's not overly relevant for the decision.

You're absolutely right, in "real world" settings of commercial projects, it's rarely a concern. That's why I distanced myself from commercial development.

Are you making this comment as an individual, perhaps building personal web projects? Or, as a representative of a (for profit) business? If so, was this a business decision?

I am not sure the disabled analogy holds. I agree with wheelchair ramps because being disabled is not a choice. However, using a “disabled” browser •is• a choice. One my business has decided isn’t worth supporting and can use the time to add features that the majority of users want.

I'm making this comment as an individual who operates several public-facing web sites, and also writing and supporting a framework for making these websites.

I don't think it is a choice for many people, for example:

If you are using someone else's device where you cannot install anything.

If you are using an older device, which may need JS disabled for performance reasons.

If the browser you're using has special accessibility features that other browsers don't.

If you tried to install another browser, but were not able to.

There are many scenarios, some which I may not even be able to anticipate ahead of time.

My framework's basic features: account registration, posting, commenting, voting, and filtering, are all supported on mainstream or once-mainstream (1% or more market share) browsers released since 1995, to my knowledge, with and without JavaScript.

If I'm able to accomplish this pretty much by myself with a bit of elbow grease, I can't help but think that it's only laziness and excuses which prevent someone with more manpower from at least providing something like mbasic (but not broken like mbasic) to all users, especially on informational read-only sites.

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