Login has never "technically" required javascript but the various provider buttons over the years have used it to fill in and submit a form. Today you can sign in with a manually enetered OpenID or email & password with javascript disabled. When OpenID is deprecated, email and password logins will remain <noscript> friendly. I don't think signup has been <noscript> friendly in years, I'll take a look at fixing that ASAP. Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 15:40

logging in is nice, upvoting, commenting (at least see all comments!) and answering would allow blind people to participate. Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 15:45

@user2987828 As a workaround, you can go to https://<site>.com/posts/<id>/comments to see all the comments (for example, for this post, you can go to https://meta.stackexchange.com/posts/307691/comments. Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 17:51

Signup will work without JS in the next build. Voting, commenting, and answering are various degrees of complicated. Answering technically works, but Google's ReCaptcha will fail anyone without JS enabled (we may be able to relax that, but it requires more discussion; I've done the groundwork anyway). Voting and commenting I think have always required JS so there's not an easy fix there - I've pinged the relevant parties to see if it's addressable. Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 18:56

Wait, people actually disable JS? How on earth do you use the internet without JS? Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 23:16

Or that there's folks who can't use modern browsers for acessability reasons imagine lynx and a screen reader. I'm sure a lot of people would live a text browser that does se and see chat perfectly. Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 5:00

@Kevin Montrose "Google's ReCaptcha will fail anyone without JS enabled (we may be able to relax that, but it requires more discussion [...])" : I started the discussion 4 years ago in meta.stackexchange.com/questions/208862/… : is it a good place ? Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 9:01

@Clonkex I modifed my answer to add a second reason for that, beside security: fastest way to load a page. It is even faster in lynx browser, because this one does not load images... Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 9:03

@J F oh thanks I didn't know that. Would it be easy to insert such links as noscript fallbacks for all links like "show 5 more comments" ? It currently opens httNOGREPps://host-redacted.stackexchange.com/questions/number-redacted/title-redacted# but it would be nice if it showed your link instead. Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 9:52

@Clonkex "I've done the groundwork anyway" Thanks a lot! Would it be possible, someday, to test this work on some URL, on a hostname you create just for my tests ? Then please send me a mail about that. Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 9:55

@KevinMontrose : "Login has never "technically" required javascript" : it still does require javaScript, I just re-tested on lynx browser. Without openID, lynx on stackoverflow.com/users/login shows "[BUTTON Input] (not implemented)". I can fill the openID field with httNOGREPps://openid.stackexchange.com but openID's submits to a 404. I documented details 4 years ago on meta.stackexchange.com/questions/208862/… You can deduce from last linked comment that nothing changed in 4 years. Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 10:03

@Clonkex Many websites work fine without javascript. Most are functional with a subset of their scripts enabled. Just on this page, I have 6 domains disabled, everything's fine. This, plus ublock origin, can make pages load several seconds faster. Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 14:02

@isanae Honestly I prefer my webpages to look and function exactly as intended (minus some ads) over loading slightly faster. Even on crappy internet most sites only take a couple of seconds to load. Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 21:57

There is a way to browse and search questions, post (answers, questions and comments), edit posts, and vote, without Javascript. Use Emacs and the sx package. For initial setup, you need to generate an authentication token with a browser, I don't know if that requires Javascript. Emacs has good support for blind people, including Emacspeak. Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 22:40

@Gilles : guess I jumped on your link. But it is only usable on stackexchange sites, so the necessity to learn all its shortcuts is balanced by this restriction. Commented Mar 9, 2018 at 13:47

@Gilles : I have started to develop an add-on that shows in a lynx browser running in a separate window the live content of the firefox window, including what javascript just did to the html document. The firefox browser is listening to the keyboard, but only shows in Xvfb. Current version only work for http:// sites ; if you motivate me, I can resume developping it to also work on https:// sites. Commented Mar 9, 2018 at 13:49

@Clonkex: That's fine for you, but since most sites basically have to be non-Javascript friendly (or else Googlebot can't read them), turning off Javascript is not an unreasonable thing for people to do. Commented Mar 9, 2018 at 22:46

@Clonkex When you work around people who sell browser exploit chains for a living, you tend to get more than a little weary about using JavaScript yourself. The fact that SE doesn't use CSP either is a little scary. Commented Mar 10, 2018 at 8:48

@Clonkex Honestly, I prefer my webpages to not spy on me, track my every move, or sell my information to parties unknown, vs having a bit more functionality. If your site stops working when I disable facebook, doubleclick, etc, then I guess you didn't really want my business (and yes, I leave non-annoying ads enabled because of this--I know how capitalism works).. Commented Mar 12, 2018 at 13:54

While I agree with the other reasons for keeping as much functionality without JavaScript as possible, totally blind people can and do use browsers that support JavaScript. I am sure that Firefox and Chrome work with NVDA and JAWS on Windows (although Firefox 57 broke most of the accessibility support, which is currently being worked on), and I'm pretty confident that VoiceOver supports Safari on Mac. I don't know how well Orca works nowadays for Linux users, though. Commented Mar 12, 2018 at 16:04

@A.P. You should try these yourself, and see that it slows down frustratingly the browsing experience on SE. Start with your phone, e.g., if you don't have a mac. Lynx browser is more adapted to screen readers, works on braille screens, ... Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 8:12

@KevinMontrose "Signup will work without JS in the next build." I just successfully logged in using lynx browser, thanks for your work. The login form shows the new sentence Because JavaScript is disabled, you can only log in by entering your OpenID URL manually: and I entered openid.stackexchange.com in the new field attached to that sentence. openid.stackexchange.com asked my email address and my password for the first SE site, for the second SE site it did not reask them and just logged me in. Commented Apr 30, 2018 at 8:52