Roger Johansson talks about one of the key elements in writing an accessible website: JavaScript interaction must be input device independent. He talks about some low-hanging fruit for how to take steps to follow the rule and allow non or limited mouse users the ability to use your site. I try to push accessible, unobtrusive javascript as much as possible on the projects I’m on, but the pushing gets more difficult when the project is an (increasingly more and more rich) web application. I never seem to have enough ammo to convince the customer of the need (even with the Target lawsuit).
Should I need to do the convincing though? Is it something the customer would just expect out of the rich web application they are having built? Maybe it should be a basic assumption, but cost comes into play. It is more expensive to code an app so that it’s accessible or so that it will degrade gracefully without javascript. Therefore it is something the customer should probably buy off on if it wasn’t part of the initial bid. So, I do make sure the topic comes up with the customer, but apparently my sales skills need some work. Roger gave a good list of users that don’t use a mouse (some of them not-so-obvious)…maybe that’ll help my next pitch 
* Mobility impaired people who cannot use a mouse at all
* People with motor impairments who can use a mouse but lack fine motor control
* Screen reader users who do not use a mouse, or even a monitor
* People using mobile phones
* Laptop users, since most laptops have really bad trackpads or other means of positioning the cursor (ever tried using a hierarchical dropdown menu with a trackpad while riding on a train?)
* Speed typers who have learned to use keyboard navigation efficiently and are slowed down when they have to switch to their mouse (if they have one)
