Unintentionally Blank

It seems like a long time since I wrote about the importance of making websites work without JavaScript, a post that uncovered the Nationwide building society locking customers without JavaScript enabled out of their site with nothing but a blank page to look at. The post elicited a response from Ian Lloyd from the Nationwide web team, saying that they would look into the issue.

While it has been a long time before I noticed any difference, an online banking site can’t be changed up that quickly, in the last month or so I did notice a difference to the site. Jumping immediately to my “disable JavaScript” button I proceeded to try to sign on to the online banking section. I was met with a message:

Nationwide’s Internet Banking requires JavaScript and cookies to be enabled. It appears that your browser does not support JavaScript, or you have disabled it. Please re-enable JavaScript or try accessing this site using a different browser.

The Nationwide have taken the first step towards accessibility for those without JavaScript enabled, a <noscript> element prints out the above text. While I don’t claim any knowledge of the stringent security measures that banks must take, I am still quite sure that JavaScript should not be necessary to log on. To make sure of this, I checked with my other online bank, the HSBC. I was able to log on without JavaScript enabled.

Small Steps

While a <noscript> element really is the least anyone can do by notifying users that they can’t use the site without JavaScript, it is a start. As I said above, changing an online banking system is not a trivial matter, so I appreciate what the Nationwide have done so far. Let’s hope that this change can inspire further work at the Nationwide, and anywhere else where JavaScript is required.

I had a giggle this weekend thanks to a Christian Heilemann tweet. Using a JavaScript document.write to print out a <noscript> element is beyond believable. The whole thing is its own paradox, document.write wll only fire if JavaScript is enabled and <noscript> can only be seen when JavaScript is disabled, the fact that the ad script that was responsible for the script also left the tag open and messed up the rest of the site only compounds the whole thing.

Stunning!

Just over a week and a half ago the BBC launched a new home page and I just wanted to say how impressed I was with all of it! Not only is it a huge departure, in my opinion, from the previous homepage, incorporating web 2.0 style drag and drop and customisation, it is also a magnificent piece of coding.

Why?

Well, please don’t call me an asshole, but the page validates as XHTML (even the Flash clock in the top right hand side, more on that in a later post). Not only that, it also, unlike some big websites, works without JavaScript enabled (though it makes excellent use of my current favourite library, jQuery and the effects plugin Interface). With accessibility in mind, the two features above are a good start, also all images had relevant alt attributes, form inputs have relevant labels, there are links for accessibility help for the whole site and display options to change the colour scheme and size of the text. I even visited the site on my mobile, using Opera Mini, and everything worked very nicely.

I Am Impressed

Back in 2003, Molly Holzschlag rubished the BBC for their site’s conformance to standards after reporter Andrew Sinclair claimed “Some get it right: the BBC website is considered to be one of the best for people with disabilities”. It has been a long time and I don’t know what version of the site she looked at then, but the new home page should change her mind now.

The BBC has changed up its home page, the main page and flagship of their whole site, and they have done it very nicely. The rest of the site is still the same, but I would like to think that, after launching the front page, there is a lot of work going on in the background to bring the rest of the site in line. For web standards this is pretty huge, I am sure a lot of sites look up to the BBC for guidance and inspiration. To see such an important, highly trafficked and well respected site come out with a valid, accessible home page shows everyone that it can be done.

What do you think of the new BBC home page?

Recently I used a couple of JavaScript frameworks for the first time. Previously I have been trying to understand the JavaScript that underpins all the available libraries along with the fights to get different browsers to behave the same way. I never planned to use a library until I fully understood what was going on, but a project at work was kicked off with jQuery and I was left to discover how easy it all was by myself. Then, a couple of weeks later, a JavaScript course paid heavy attention to Prototype. The ease of slipping into using either of these libraries got me thinking.

Falling In Love… With A Library

I’ve been using it for no more than two weeks and jQuery feels like a hammer, all my JavaScript problems look like nails. My problem is that I know I shouldn’t be falling for just the one library, but I don’t know where else to look! I read through Jonathan Snook’s slides from Web Directions North 08 on workin with AJAX frameworks and I am waiting for the podcast for greater detail.

What I really want to know is, what is the best way not to fall into the JavaScript library trap? If you use libraries, which ones do you use and how do you decide? How do you decide when not to use one too, as that is all important? And finally, do you have your own library of your own utility functions?

I hope you can help me out with your experience.

About a month ago I wrote about how a few high profile sites locked users out or prevented the use of parts of their site because they relied on JavaScript being available. Since publishing the post a couple of interesting things happened to reinforce to me that JavaScript accessibility matters.

The Nationwide Understands

The power of a little blog was shown the other day when I received a comment from Ian Lloyd (of Accessify and The Web Standards Project). While I have read Ian’s writing online, I had no idea that he worked for the Nationwide and was surprised to find this out in his comment and delighted to hear that he has referred the issue (users without JavaScript enabled could not access the login page to the online banking section) on to be dealt with.

For any large company, reacting to criticism from a relatively unknown blogger is quite unusual, but to do so with the grace that Ian did, especially resolving to look further into it, is fantastic. I understand what Ian said, legacy code could be at fault and it could be a long time before anything hits the main site due to the necessary processes of big business, but if the Nationwide are able to change this and allow access to the whole of their site without JavaScript being required then I will be pleased to claim a big victory for accessibility!

The People Have JavaScript Problems

It may seem to some people that 6% of users not using JavaScript is insignificant. Facebook claims to have 54 million active users, Hotmail advertises over 11 million unique users. 6% of those figures is 3 and a quarter million and over half a million users respectively, not insignificant figures.

These big numbers sound impressive, but they are also faceless numbers based on aggregated statistics and can start to mean nothing after a while. Over the last month, since publishing the original article, a few Internet users have drifted by my site driven by a few searches that prove being unable to use sites without JavaScript is confusing. In the last month I have had 4 visits from search engines with the query “facebook without javascript,” 3 visits from the search term “hotmail without javascript,” and 24 other visits from search terms involving the words JavaScript and either Facebook or Hotmail. These are real users that are finding it difficult or impossible to use a web site because it relies on JavaScript for certain functions.

Conclusion

There are users out there who do not have JavaScript enabled. It is possible, with the right mindset (like Ian Lloyd and Nationwide), to consider this and create sites that do not rely on JavaScript for core functionality. Don’t exclude users by forgetting this.