James Edwards aka Brothercake, and co-author of the The JavaScript Anthology, argues the case:
See, the web already was accessible to everyone. Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision for the web was all about universal access; and the technologies involved - such as HTTP and HTML - were designed to be platform and device agnostic; it shouldn’t matter what kind of technology you use to access the web. But commercial interests got in the way, and the desire for branding overtook the need for open, standardised solutions; in effect, we tried to run before we could walk, because the huge commercial uptake of the internet far outstripped its early capabilities. And so we got things like browser wars, browser-specific DHTML, and table-based layouts. These were things that got in the way of the original vision, because people wanted rich content when the technology wasn’t ready. And now it’s happening again.
