Respecting your craft means using the right tools and techniques for the job. Not caring about one group of users is no excuse for needing Javascript to display a chart. You don't use Javascript to display a chart because you don't need Javascript to display a chart. Render the chart server-side and use an image to display it. It's a static chart, it's not like the information is changing with every page load. To do otherwise is just lazy and disrespectful.
I didn't actually look at the site that's being complained about but SVG charts are actually the way to go in terms of accessibility, and they can certainly be rendered client side (but maybe shouldn't be, as you say, if the data is static). Charts made this way definitely beat out an image with a description
