I consider to develop a contact form which has no JavaScript whatsoever; only HTML-PHP-CSS.
Is no JavaScript contact form an accessibility problem?
Would I violate any accessibility standard of W3C or of another major accessibility organization?
No of course not. You can code straight HTML and CSS and have it still accessible, that is what the W3C standards for accessibility is all about. You don’t need JavaScript to make things accessible or be compliant. In many situations JavaScript is just a convenience for forms to do things like client side validation. But you don’t even need that if you are validating on the server (which you should do both).
In fact JavaScript can often break accessibility if not used correctly. As long as your markup is semantic, uses the correct attributes and is understood by readers and such, you should be good. None of which requires JavaScript.
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WCAG is the standard for accessibility. The one that majority of people follow (and/or should follow) is AA WCAG 2.0. If you can meet those standards, your website is generally accessible to most users and situations. I’m not a lawyer, but our company needs to create accessible websites or be at risk from the OCR (office of civil rights) and this is the standard they recommend shooting for. WCAG 2.1 is better, if you have a firm handle on 2.0 .
As said, Javascript doesn’t necessarily make anything inaccessible. This isn’t specifically a WCAG requirement, but Javascript should not make-or-break your contact form. It should work with Javascript enabled AND disabled.
There are 4 main principles to WCAG accessibility. This is called POUR.
Perceivable
Operable
Understandable
Robust
Each principle covers a wide variety of issues, so you can read up on it yourself. You would just need to make sure Javascript keeps the form Operable.
Slightly off-topic:
There is a helpful article on accessible JavaScript here: https://webaim.org/techniques/javascript/
Page two of that article includes the following:
To ensure accessibility, use either a device independent event handler (one that works with both the mouse and the keyboard) or use both mouse dependent and keyboard dependent event handlers.
In my experience, that is very frequently ignored, especially in things like JS menus, leaving them inaccessible to keyboard users. Visual impairments are not the only accessibility issue, but very often they seem to be the only ones taken into account, even by people with a genuine intention to make things accessible.
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