I was joking, of course. The link says it all. Obviously it’s an extreme case, but yes, most of us experience access problems in some form–even if we are tired, and the screen is too bright or messy. All of us, at some time, get injured, too (even if temporarily) which can mean difficulty moving a mouse etc.
The funny thing is, HTML (at least used semantically) is quite accessible, responsive etc. It’s just all the junk we layer over the top of it that gradually gets in the way.
I forgot about that - that would mean that 100% of people are disabled at least part of the time. So catering for accessibility is something that will impact significantly on 100% of visitors and so should actually have the highest priority alongside providing worthwhile content.
The new HTML5 elements have a semantic purpose. Granted that purpose is not widely supported yet, but these things take time.
Because the term HTML5 is used broadly, it makes it easy for people to associate the whole thing with the bits they don’t like (fancy gimmicks et. al)
Some of the new input types (number, email, date) can be pretty helpful from a usability point of view. When combined with feature detection (ala Modernizr) they may even reduce the amount of JavaScript compliant browsers have to download and run. They also degrade to work in older browsers.
Elements such as nav, section, header, footer and the like will look unstyled and weird in older browsers with JS disabled. But down the track when UA support improves they may well provide a boost to accessibility. The IE6 JS-off users will get an ugly site, but it’s probably perfectly usable.
The nostalgia towards HTML4 is a bit overdone IMO. It’s not perfection in markup.
Before questioning the qualifications of my lawyer, why not first post the qualifications you claim to have to give me legal advice related to any countries’ laws?
Before I answer your question, why not do me the courtesy of answering the question I asked you earlier -
If you want to be taken seriously, I am entitled to know the verifiable legal qualifications you have to give legal advice. If you choose to not post them, as you are entitled to not do, then I am fully entitled to take any “legal advice” you post as being totally rubbish for my circumstances.
and I also asked you earlier to post the laws whose jurisdiction you claim I would be under and in breach of in my circumstances.
On each challenge you have run away and not provided the information to back up your “legal advice”.
If you do me the courtesy of providing me the information I first requested above, I will then return the courtesy and answer your question. In the mean time I will continue to treat your “legal advice” as total garbage since you are not qualified to give me legal advice and instead I will be continue to be advised and guided by my personal lawyer who is adequately qualified to give me legal advice.
The qualified legal advice I have been given is that in my circumstances I would not be in breach of any laws whose jurisdiction I am under.
webdev, whilst I appreciate your passion and enthusiasm I would ask you to temper your arguments and kerb your aggressive stance towards members and staff. The advice you received was not given directly from a lawyer but from a seasoned veteran of the web world.
At no point was it claimed that he was a lawyer and that you were wrong, merely that you should perhaps seek to further clarify WHERE the laws apply.
If you have a tame lawyer at your end then it would be worth running this by him for his opinion - he is qualified and charges you appropriately, we offer our services free.
As for the OP’s original question… I would start using HTML5 to build the sites but not rely on JS to make it comply.
Make it look good and work well without the use of JS and then hang the fancy bells and whistles on it 
ok, that’s fine.
Since he is not a lawyer, then as I said before he is not qualified to give me legal advice and the “legal advice” he has posted is total garbage for my circumstances and I suggest in the future he goes and gets his facts straight before attempting to give me advice he is not qualified at all to give. I don’t take advice from wannabe lawyers.
There are other people reading this thread for whom that advice could be valuable. Just because you feel it doesn’t apply to you, there is no need to dismiss it out of hand.
Just to clarify, I don’t know about other jurisdictions, but under UK law, there is no requirement to provide the same experience, simply to provide equal access to services. Which brings me back to my original reply, that as long as I can use the site, I don’t mind it looking less pretty for me that it might for others.
If you look back through what I posted you will see that I have always spoken on behalf of myself and no-one else. Felgall was directing his advice to me as well as everyone else.
All I am saying is that he is not qualified to give me legal advice because he has no qualifications to do so and he has been unable to provide information to backup his “legal advice” when I challenged him to do so.
For my circumstances, his advice is total garbage.
But if his advice is useful to someone else in different circumstances to me then I have no problem with that. Everyone should get their own legal advice for their circumstances from qualified lawyers and I, for one, do not take advice from unqualified wannabe lawyers, especially in forums like this, and simply dismiss any such advice as rubbish.
I think these personally targeted “lawyer” comments are dragging on too long in this thread. I know it’s being kept very civil and I suspect some of it was phrasing but it detracts and it looks like it’s already been Flagged on page 1.
There are approximately 10 million disabled people in Great Britain, which represents around 18 percent of the population. Like I said more than 1 in 10 people. Eighteen percent is not a small percentage of potential visitors and that doesn’t include those having other difficulties with websites that are not disabled.
I suspect many people here have either adblockers or selective script blocking within their browser either native or addons. Whether or not they use it is their discretion but I guess its well over 95% even if it were 1% the small percentages of big numbers are also big numbers.
Summary of this thread:
As the OP doesn’t want to listen to other people’s opinions despite asking for it in the first place - there is no point in continuing this thread as it is becoming repetitive and not going anywhere.
Thread closed.