Some users, like journalists and the visually impaired, disable JavaScript. If you can make a product that works for them, why not do it?

Some web clients, like TTY-based clients, ignore both JavaScript AND CSS. People using these clients rightly expect to get a worse web experience overall. But if you can make a functional web page for them, why wouldn’t you?

These both sound like relatively niche edge cases. But nobody knows how things will change in the future.

Thanks for touching on accessibility. I believe that good accessibility leads to a better design. The nice thing about starting with HTML is there are good defaults.

I wrote another post about building a search form about progressively enhancing a search form (https://jch.github.io/posts/2025-01-30-building-modern-searc...). Starting with semantic <search> and <input> elements gives sane browser and screenreader behavior.

Perhaps my title came on too strong, but I'm not advocating against javascript. It's more about understanding capabilities HTML and CSS can handle, and what is better suited for JS.