Brad Knowles wrote:
Speaking only for myself, this is not the kind of approach I'd like to see used. I'd prefer to see the web application auto-detect that JavaScript is not available, and therefore to automatically present the appropriate non-JavaScript interface.
I will do this for browsers not employing JavaScript. Screen readers employ JavaScript and provide no indication what they do/do not provide feedback to the user for.
Likewise, it should auto-detect that there is a screen reader being used, and present the appropriate screen reader compatible interface.
This is an admirable goal. One "screen reader" in semi-common use is IE 6 via Jaws; another one is Safari with OS X reading turned on.
They present to me no handle, user-agent or otherwise, indicating they're being spoken rather than seen.
Of course, the manual options should always be there, but if we're forcing the user to manually select a different page in order to get away from the JavaScript stuff, then I think we're doing something wrong.
I agree that it is an Ugly Hack; In this case I think the screen readers are misbehaved, but there's not a lot I can do about that.
~ethan fremen