Building Web Apps that Work Everywhere

Chapter 1. Introduction

In 2007, at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, gave a keynote address on the mobile web. In this talk, which happened six months prior to the release of the original iPhone, Berners-Lee states:

The Web is designed, in turn, to be universal: to include anything and anyone. This universality includes an independence of hardware device and operating system… and clearly this includes the mobile platform. It also has to allow links between data from any form of life, academic, commercial, private or government. It can’t censor: it must allow scribbled ideas and learned journals, and leave it to others to distinguish these. It has to be independent of language and of culture. It has to provide as good an access as it can for people with disabilities.

This idea of universality has become even more critical in our increasingly diverse world of web access. By design, the Web works across platforms and devices, easily connecting rich documents with one another and providing access to users around the world. Despite this universal default, as web developers, it is our responsibility to build a web that is accessible to all. But before we look at how of building an everywhere Web, let’s consider why.

In the United States, where I live, nearly 1 in 5 adults own a smartphone, but either do not have access to high-speed internet at home or have limited access other than their cell phone according to a Pew Research Center study ...