Web pages that don't show anything without JS are broken. Ones that show only a message about enabling JS are worse.
It seems JS;DR was already a thing long before I felt the need for it yesterday, when I simply missed that article about synths at ableton.com because it was broken.
https://indieweb.org/js;dr
What about web applications? I am the office champion of accessible web, but recently we made a web based game, in canvas. Without js, there's no game engine, so we had a noscript tag.
That synths article uses built in JavaScript synths (using audio apis). I agree the text should display without JavaScript but the purpose of the article (get hands on with synths) is eliminated without JS.
Basically, the web not only is a document delivery place, it's also the new Newgrounds. None of those games would work if you disabled flash, why should web applications (beyond ones that are simple documents) work without JavaScript?
> > Web pages that don't show anything without JS are broken.
> What about web applications?
I would say is depends upon the application.
A data entry and simple reporting service? That should definitely be accessible and can easily be made to work without JS. Though some scripting might be acceptable: modern screen readers will cope and holding back for people with ancient screen readers is no different to holding back because some people still use IE or Android 4.4 (though do some research/testing to see what they actually w{ill|on't} commonly cope with).
If it is an interactive game or similar then you are not going to replace that practically with form submissions and no JS, so by all means don't bother caring that it doesn't work without JS. Though do make sure you include a <noscript> tag if otherwise nothing useful would display, just so users know what is going on and there isn't a fault at their end or a fault in your app that they should report.
Anything between is a grey area: you'll have to use your best judgement of your actual and potential target audiences. Though again, make sure something useful displays for everyone even if that is just a polite "sorry, we can't get this working for you" message.
> but the purpose of the article (get hands on with synths) is eliminated without JS.
If there is nothing to read, there is no way to know there is any app, let alone decide that I want it to run.
> why should web applications (beyond ones that are simple documents) work without JavaScript?
I imagine that the other kind of web app does everything with POST and forms and such like it's 2003, and I can understand that you'd prefer not to. I'm not saying they should or that they must all do without JS. I'm saying that if the article was a document that (also) documented the proper use of the web app within it then I would have liked to have been free to read it first. NoScript blocks <embed>ded things all the time and I temporarily allow them all the time. That workflow would have worked here, but if (as you seem to suggest is reasonable) the entire article was blocked because its app would be useless, then my strategy wasn't even considered, and someone is doing it wrong.
However, if a goal was to teach everyone to just run anything and everything and stop caring about privacy and security because it's a PITA, then someone is doing it right. I sure miss the good old days of Weekly_Report.doc.exe
One of those linked articles hit HN 5 years ago and almost nobody cared. I use NoScript since 2005, and I'm watching more and more things break, and it's "unpleasant"
