I wholeheartedly disagree. This is a public-facing government website. It ought to degrade gracefully in order to reach the broadest possible audience. Or, write a decent site to start with, and you wouldn't have to worry about degrading. The entire page is nothing but a shell for a web app written in JavaScript that doesn't need to be a web app written entirely in JavaScript.

> Pages don't need a fallback to non-Javascript in 2019.

Strongly disagree. Having your page completely break instead of degrading gracefully puts up a barrier to those who cannot run JavaScript (for example, users with older, weaker computers).

Thank you for the response. I wasn't trying to suggest that it was a requirement, simply that it seemed odd that there would be no fallback whatsoever. I guess I'm behind the times.

> Pages don't need a fallback to non-Javascript in 2019. Accessibility technologies now fully support a JS enabled web, with accessibility standards following suit.

I think we should broaden the definition of accessibility to make websites aren't unneccesarily annoying or invasive for normal users either ;-)

(And yes, making web applications is part of my job.)

> Pages don't need a fallback to non-Javascript in 2019. Accessibility technologies now fully support a JS enabled web, with accessibility standards following suit.

This is wrong, of course, because it requires that people buy expensive hardware to use the latest accessibility technology, which is not generally available. It's like demanding that people buy electric-powered wheelchairs instead of making your building accessible to normal wheelchairs.

> We simply don't support this edge case, and our legal department supports our legal right to do so (in particular in relation to ADA requirements).

And I'm sure that ignoring poor people enables you to sleep very well at night.

As one of "those who have voluntarily disabled JavaScript" this comment is pretty disappointing.

I disagree.

At this point, there is no reason to support <IE11 style JS, but JavaScript-less browsers are still A Thing and always will be. Search engines, Opera Mini, various accessibility thing, people with extremely low bandwidth, and weirdos who choose to disable JS are all factors.

Yes, if you're making a webapp, there's no good way to do it without JS and you can just be upfront about that. Also, people who can't use ES6+ are going to zero over time, so it's fine to just write ES6. But you should also have a no-JS fallback version of an information page (anything that's not a webapp) because that's an important usecase that won't drop to zero over time.

Working without JS is still a core requirement of GDS sites; c.f. https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressi...

and for more as to why: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missi...