Two notes, though I doubt anyone working on government pages will actually read them:
1) PDF -> HTML improves accessibility. HTML -> content rendered by JS via an SPA framework is worse than PDF, and approaches Flash. Please don't do that.
2) Think of the robots :). One of the problem of government data is that while you can usually find the scanned PDF or an XLS file with the data you're looking for, it's completely useless for automated processing. Making public data easier for machines to read enables citizens to build interesting tools on top of them.
I'd usually be right beside anyone wanting to begin JavaScript bashing but it feels like you are conflating two issues.
Whilst the (for lack of a better term) JavaScript / SPA ecosystem encourages (especially to novices) people to do things in the Wrong Way, I wouldn't say that an SPA is inherently less accessible, and I definitely wouldn't say that it's less accessible than a PDF.
I—like I'm sure the rest of HN—have experienced many a terrible SPA, but from my JavaScript dabbling it's becoming more and more apparent that it's due to bad developers more than anything else.
> I'd usually be right beside anyone wanting to begin JavaScript bashing but it feels like you are conflating two issues.
I'm not really bashing JavaScript per se, I'm bashing modern web development ecosystem.
Sure, you can use JS and modern SPA frameworks to build lean, accessible, progressively-enhanced pages. But that's not the default. That is not what tutorials will encourage you to do. That is not what those tools were designed to facilitate. And your typical developer will absolutely follow trends and "industry standard" in the technologies they use.
It's kind of like with bashing PowerPoint. To be completely honest, PowerPoint is a very powerful tool that can help you deliver amazing presentations if you know how to use it for that goal. Most people don't, and the defaults of PowerPoint encourage bad style - hence people bash the tool.
I will attribute this to the ignorant of management.
The local government here mandated all website to have w3c AA grade accessibility. But all the management fellow it by the letter of standard. None of them provide us the time or resource to do accessibility testing. They explain away the accessibility issues raised by the concerned groups.
So, yes plain html is better. They have a higher chance works without any prior testing
Non-technical / ignorant people are also highly likely to put blobs of text content into PDFs as raster images, which pretty much makes them impossible to search/index or deal with for visually impaired persons' software assistance tools. I have seen too many government PDFs that would be impossible to understand if I were visually impaired.
1) PDF -> HTML improves accessibility. HTML -> content rendered by JS via an SPA framework is worse than PDF, and approaches Flash. Please don't do that.
2) Think of the robots :). One of the problem of government data is that while you can usually find the scanned PDF or an XLS file with the data you're looking for, it's completely useless for automated processing. Making public data easier for machines to read enables citizens to build interesting tools on top of them.