Thoughts on Progressive Enhancement and Accessibility

A lovely post from WordPress co-founding developer Mike Little on progressive enhancement and JavaScript dependence. It’s an excellent retort to Joe Hoyle’s response to Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko’s reaction to WordPress’ announcement of Calypso and their mode to Node and a Single Page App architecture for Wordpress.com administration.

Here’s a nugget of gold:

[V]isual difficulties are not the only reason people need accessible web sites. Those with motor difficulties, who can only use keyboards or special devices like braille readers, head wands, sip and puff controllers, etc. or simply those with unsteady hands that find a mouse difficult to use like the ever-increasing aged population, all need to be able to use the web too.