The grammar of the English language does not forbid one to write in Greek, but if you choose to write in Greek only, you will compromise on a lot of people being able to understand you.
The same with standards, and you are misunderstanding on purpose.
If Google chooses to not support simple HTML, then they are choosing to not support countless accessibility tools, and they know it. Some blind people will have a more miserable life because Google attained a de facto monopoly, but does not recognize some of the moral obligations that people like me feel should come with such a position. "With great power comes great responsibility", or maybe not.
Is lynx up to spec on HTML5 ARIA attributes? My understanding is that that's how accessibility is "supposed" to be done now, but if lynx hasn't been updated in a while, it might not support those HTML5 features, and thus not be standards compliant.
(edit: Someone below notes that lynx appears to incorrectly parse valid HTML5 on the google homepage, so it sounds like Lynx's lack of updates are hurting here).
> Is lynx up to spec on HTML5 ARIA attributes? My understanding is that that's how accessibility is "supposed" to be done now
No, that's not true at all and is unfortunately a common anti-pattern. Accessibility is supposed to be done by using standard HTML elements and attributes. ARIA is there to extend / fill in the blanks and to fix things when people deviate from the norm. For instance, if you have a button, you should almost always use the standard HTML <button> and only use some other element type with an ARIA role=button if it's unavoidable. And <button role=button> is redundant. Best practice is still to use the semantics defined by HTML, as it always was.
>The same with standards, and you are misunderstanding on purpose.
While I get what you mean, the use of the term "standards" just conflates an orthogonal issue.
You can be 100% standards compliant and not readable on Lynx, or 100% standards compliant and readable on Lynx.
Relying on JS is not some niche obscure corner or some bypass of the standards as per the English/Greek analogy. It's basically the norm for most SPAs today.
The problem is that the standards are not compliant with Lynx (or rather that Lynx is not compliant with the standards).
What you want is not Google to use the standards, but to use the part of the standard that is about simple, not JS dependent, HTML.
Google shouldn't be restricted to a subset of the available technology because a niche browser isn't updating to available technology. Yes, a side-effect of this is that the blind community using Lynx can't use Google. While unfortunate, it's also a tiny, tiny, TINY community.
If you want to be upset, be upset with Lynx for falling behind. Or don't be upset and switch to JAWS, BRLTTY, Orca, etc. But the idea that anyone is supposed to support every possible browser is just silly.
It seems that the problem is caused by the fact that Lynx isn't standards compliant anymore, and fails to interpret valid HTML5 structures correctly because they aren't valid under older standards.
What does that even mean? What standards it complies with? Is there a compliance test suite or report somewhere? Because there definitely are bunch of standards it does not comply with.
