Accessible design is the law - Target being sued!
By bhancock on Oct 11, 2007 in Web Design
A lawsuit against Target has now achieved class action status, in a claim that the retailer’s web site is inaccessible to the blind, therefore violating federal and state discrimination laws. This story is making headlines and is bouncing around the web as if this is something new. In reality, back in 1996 the U.S. Justice Department ruled that Web sites are public accommodations and must therefore offer access to the disabled to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). What does this mean? It means that designing with the needs of the disabled is the law, and companies that don’t take their needs into account can and will be penalized.
This may scare some site owners because they are worried about being sued. In reality, designing a site to be accessible isn’t terribly complicated, and besides the fact that you will not be alienating the disabled, you could benefit by inviting a whole new channel of shoppers into your web site. I have read several reports that claim disabled web shoppers are some of the most loyal customers the web has to offer. Once they find a comfortable and convenient place to shop, they keep coming back.
Anyway, here are a few resources to help with accessible design guidelines:
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2 Comment(s)
By Steven Snell on Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
I’ve seen this headline a lot recently, and it is a little bit scary for anyone doing business online. Even though I try to design sites to be accessible, I don’t use them the same way a handicapped person would, so I may be missing things.
By bhancock on Oct 11, 2007 | Reply
Unfortunately, the guidelines aren’t very clear either. People have said this Target lawsuit stems from them not putting ALT tags on images on their site, but I haven’t seen anything concrete that explains the specific violations.
In general, I think the most important elements center around ALT tags that accurately describe the images, staying away from table based designs (use DIVs instead), and using descriptive link text (which is good for SEO as well). Screen readers for the deaf read from left to write and the translation can be confused without keeping this in mind.