Last week, a
federal district court judge ruled that a retailer may be sued if its website is
inaccessible to the blind.
The suit,
filed by The National Federation for the Blind against Target stores, charges
that Target’s website (Target) is inaccessible to the
blind, and therefore violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. (ADA), the
California Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the California Disabled Persons Act.
Target asked the court to dismiss the action by arguing that no law requires
Target to make its website accessible. The Court denied Target’s motion to
dismiss and held that the federal and state civil rights laws do apply to a
website such as target.com.
You might
ask how we should make websites ADA accessible: based on the NFB suit, they
claim that Target’s site is an issue because it lacks compliant alt-text, an
invisible code embedded beneath graphic images that allows screen readers to
detect and vocalize a description of the image to a blind computer user. It
also contains inaccessible image maps and other graphical features, preventing
blind users from navigating and making use of all of the functions of the
website. And because the website requires the use of a mouse to complete a
transaction, blind Target customers are unable to make purchases on target.com
independently.
It’s
interesting news for retailers and agencies. How do other big company sites hold
up? How might this case impact online retailers in the short term…will they want
to revamp their sites…quickly? Or will they wait and see?
Interesting blog commentary from BestKungFu, Accessibility Blog, and Matt Heerema.
Tracy Coté
Comments
Connections
Interesting post. Are we missing out on the disabled market? With the baby boomers aging and diabetes quickly becoming an epidemic there maybe an untapped market for sites that enable the blind to shop online with the same ease we take for granted.
This is not a new problem. This same issue came up for AOL about 4 years ago. That said it was remedied with a VoiceXML / speech recognition application that gave blind users access to the same website over the phone. VXML allows you to take your existing eCommerce or website infrastructure and create a phone experience for the blind. In that case Voice XML combined with speech recognition was an emerging technology in 2000.
This may be an interesting opportunity for the interactive team working on their website to create an amazing experience for phone users.
The legal eagles at Target should do some homework on the AOL case findings. AOL lost and thus AOL by phone was born.
Usability elements are basic requirements while building sites. I am still amaze that a company like Target.com missed that important point. Descriptive alt tags, title, navigation and everything else that Target.com is missing are not only good for the blind users, but also the search engines when they index their product pages.
A lot of companies are missing out on disabled market, and I think it is done intentionally because nobody really knows how to enter that market with digital media or don’t care to pursue that niche market. But I think Kari’s on to something!