User Experience Design ...heard of it?

[D856C]

Accessibility should not be sacrificed for "user experience" as a stand alone Flash website does; I must reiterate that Flash is perfectly acceptable as long as an alternative is provided; the same goes for AJAX, it is acceptable as long as the application does not rely on it (it adds additional functionality to those able to use it).

Again, that's a good point. And I'm glad you made it. The website should load. If the website doesn't load and work in the barest, most minimal sense of the word, you can't use it.

Very good point.

Related:

Two Key Challenges for Ajax Adoption that We Have Ignored 1. 10% browsers have Javascript support turned off. 2. For example, a lot of Ajax toolkits don’t have support keyboard navigation (mouse-less operation), which is a key requirement for a lot of operational applications.

AJAX Accessibility Issue caught vendors attention. Is this a major issue? "The main disadvantage of Ajax is a Web page is not required to reload to change, many screen readers or other assistive technologies used by sight-impaired or otherwise disabled users may not be aware of the dynamic changes. Particularly this is the major hurdle for federal sector because all federal government web sites/applications has to meet the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act."

Wow. Flash must be really, really bad ...then. Good thing UX Design has to work without it.