I Used The Web For A Day With JavaScript Turned Off

Many of us are taught to make sure our sites can be used via keyboard. Why is that, and what is it like in practice? Chris Ashton did an experiment to find out.

By Chris Ashton

Have you ever wondered whether it’s possible to do anything on the web without JavaScript? How many sites use progressive enhancement in practice? Chris Ashton did an experiment to find out.

This article is part of a series in which I attempt to use the web under various constraints, representing a given demographic of user. I hope to raise the profile of difficulties faced by real people, which are avoidable if we design and develop in a way that is sympathetic to their needs. This week, I’m disabling JavaScript.

Why noscript Matters

Firstly, to clarify, there’s a difference between supporting a noscript experience and using the noscript tag. I don’t generally like the noscript tag, as it fragments your web page into JavaScript and non-JavaScript versions rather than working from the same baseline of content, which is how experiences get messy and things get overlooked.

You may have lots of useful content inside your noscript tags, but if I’m using a JavaScript-enabled browser, I’m not going to see any of that — I’m going to be stuck waiting for the JS experience to download. When I refer to the…