Let's get something straight: I don't think that. That's actually the title of a blog post on an Opera Dev blog I wanted to link to.

There's always a lot of talk of accessible JavaScript, especially from designers. Usually they advocate complicated solutions involving appending event handlers onto HTML elements after load, to avoid inline onclicks and such. And to me, that's an audience thing. Yes, flashy scripts on blogs for no good reason are silly, but to say that the user experience is equivalent between the real Flickr and the example prototype he put together is... well, you know.

I go around in my head about this occasionally, and sometimes I feel like I've sold out accessibility in the name of great features and ease of use for customers who can see at the expense of people who can't. Because let's face it, when we talk about accessibility and Ajax, we're talking about the visually-impaired or blind (and that's largely because of the terrible technology those users are forced to deal with).

But then I think about what amazing products we've made with Ajax, and what advances we made in usability and user experience (yes, the two are different) because of it, I don't want to stop what we're doing.

Besides, there's a semi-universal truth here: no absolute statements are always true.

Except that one.

Ha! But really. That's extreme. And worse - while the designers adding event handlers may be cautiously and constructively conservative, this is plain reactionary. I don't have an answer for it, but like most things, the solution lies somewhere in the middle of a pure Ajax world and a purely plain hypertext world.