[whatwg] RE: Degrading of web applications

[Jim Ley]

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 01:00:33 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Jim Ley wrote:
> > > If application providers consider that compatibility with non-JS
> > > browsers (and browsers with JS disabled) is not critical, then that is
> > > an important datapoint.
> >
> > It is, unfortunately, it's also something that won't fly in the
> > application world of the EU, where anti-discrimination employment laws
> > will cripple any attempt to have this fly - I realise as a non EU
> > national and an employee of a non-EU corporation you may not realise
> > this, but the EU market is too important to web-applications to the most
> > of us to consider anything we can't use in that environment.
> 
> Could you give me a reference to this EU law that says that requiring
> JavaScript support is illegal but requiring HTML support is not?

You're confusing things, you're confusing the availability of suitable
access technology that supports scripting with the theoretical concept
that such AT exists.  It doesn't, so given that fact, so as to not
discriminate against our employees (or potential ones of course) with
disabilities, our intranet sites have to work with the relevant Access
Technology, unfortunately this currently limits what we can do, and
requiring javascript is not there.

relevant UK law can be found at
http://www.disability.gov.uk/legislation/ much of which is the UK
incorporation of EU directives.

Jim.