Target sued over web site design being inaccessible

I agree. There are limits to sanity and any judge who doesn't throw this out immediately is also out of their respective gourd. If this passes, not only would ALL websites be subject to lawsuits, but any print medium at all. Why not sue magazines too for not having braille editions?

Some magasines I read are now starting to put their content online for people who subscribe. A whole new market of people who can't read the print version opens up to you.

If this passes, not only would ALL websites be subject to lawsuits…

No more than your home is currently required to meet ADA standards.

I wonder why all magazines aren't required to publish Braille editions. Or are they?

No, to my knowledge there is no law that requires all magazines (or pretty much any magazine) to be published in Braille (or in audio format). However, if sites are made properly accessible and have similar content, the internet has the ability to open up virtually every publication to the disabled with the use of readers (both Braille and audio readers).

I'm curious, I see a lot of people stating they are web developers here. Do you really feel that the web is the same as a static magazine or book, and that the same laws or lack there-of apply? Is a web-based retail site really the same as a mail-order catalog? It seems to me that this is far from the best analogy for the internet.

The difference is that the technology to let blind people read web pages exists. No one is asking them to invent anything new. The Internet is for everyone that wants it.

I was being a bit harsh with my comment about the internet not being for the blind. I agree with you Richard that the technology exists to make sites accessible to the blind. What I was really getting at was should site owners be forced to make their sites accessible to all? I agree with the following comment from

If this passes, not only would ALL websites be subject to lawsuits, but any print medium at all. Why not sue magazines too for not having braille editions?

What about sites that post audio / video content. Should they be forced to publish sign langugage versions or versions with subtitles so the deaf can enjoy the content to?

I don't think people should have to provide sign language videos. Even though many deaf people are unable to read English, because sign language is their only language and it bears no resemblence to English. (English is spelt phonetically and that must be a concept that is hard to get your head round if you have never heard the sounds.) I think technology should do most of the work (as screen reading technology does) and we should make our sites compatible with that technology. I'm waiting for translator programs like screen readers that will be able to read English and have an avatar that will do the sign language.

I'm personally hoping that this will be the only lawsuit and that people aren't rushing out to sue lots of websites. I think something like this was probably needed to make big business take web accessibility seriously. Hopefully they'll get the message and start putting accessibility in their requirements for future website work and upgrades.

There have been no cases in the UK, but virtually every web magazine I read as an article about how to make your site more accessible. Educating people is far more important than suing them.

I agree that it is easy to make sites accessible to the blind and that Target was lazy in not doing so, but that's not the question here at all. The question is should this guy be allowed to SUE Target? No. Once upon a time, if a business did something wrong, they'd lose business and that fact alone would cause them to change their ways. Now with these frivolous lawsuits, we've got teams of lawyers overlooking every minutia of a company's public presence. It's ridiculous, really.
So, if you think it's wrong for Target to not make their site accessible (it really is dumb a company that large wouldn't have done so), then boycott them, write letters, etc. and I'm sure they'll change it, AND other companies will see this and follow suit. Is this man owed any money? Absolutely not.

It's a little more difficult, especially when you consider that there are several layers of web accessibility, each with a sizeable checklist of required items.

No, you're right. I'm a web developer myself, but I don't mean it's a 5 minute process. I just would have thought a large company like target would be smart enough to make their website accessible. With most large companies I've done work for, they're all about accessibility whether it be browser, OS, disabilities, or whatever it might be.

True, using the ALT tag is required for compliance with XHTML strict, but fire up lynx and look at some web pages that use ALT tags on every single image (especially for things like bulleted lists)... I do not see how it is very helpful.

Since when is Target or any other company required to make there stuff accessable by everyone. Any smart company would of course because they should want everyone's buisness. Now if this were a government website that is a completly seperate issue.

The question is should this guy be allowed to SUE Target? No. Once upon a time, if a business did something wrong, they'd lose business and that fact alone would cause them to change their ways.

Actually, restaurants and other businesses have been successfully sued for not having handicap accessible restrooms. So, there is precedence for private businesses being sued for accessibility issues.

Jimi, you are required to have an alt tag, but generally the recommendation is that if it's a trivial image, use an empty alt tag.

Of course, if you're marking up a bulleted list with inline images, for the bullets, you've probably already made a mistake. Much better to mark it up as a bulleted list and use CSS to replace the bullets with the image of your choice.

What I was really getting at was should site owners be forced to make their sites accessible to all?

Any real web designer worth his/her salt knows that you don't have to "make" your sites accessible...if you build them correctly from the beginning, they will likely already *be* accessible.

All the arguments against accessiblility centering on how unfair it is to the site owners, and how they're being forced, yadda, yadda, yadda...they're bunk.

A baker could bake bread with rat-poison and dirt, but would be "forced" to "make it comply" with FDA standards. If, instead, the baker simply used flour and water, the bread would likely *be* in compliance.

It's not at all difficult to make a website accessible to screen readers. There are differing levels of accessibility, but basic class A levels are no-brainer simple and are part and parcel with good design anyway.

The unintended consequence for many of these non-accessible sites is that they are also non-accessible to the biggest blind readers of them all: search engine bots. If Google and Yahoo bots can't "see" your site very well, it's not going to get a very good ranking...unless, of course, you pay out the nose to get it ranked higher.

And this would mean that some pimpled kid sitting in his bedroom, making a Warcraft site, or someone who just wants to sell their trinkets online, has to know how to make their sites accessible or else they could be sued. So, we'd pretty much be pushing the less web savvy folks off the web entirely and scaring off small businesses who don't have the money or know-how to develop sites that are up to the w3 standards.

...having a website that can be read by a 'reader' type browser probably costs less than constructing a handi-accessible bathroom so there is no reason not to do it.

And your entire point has not been invalidated. Cost isn't the issue here. It's the fact that EVERYBODY has to go through "resistance" to get things done...it's just that the rest of mankind makes the best of the situation and instead, this guy decided to try to get rich off of his hardships.

Your view that this is some sort of "advocacy" is about the same as me suing my apartment complex because I have to park 100 yards from my home and since I don't like walking they should fix that.

Spare me.

That should be "...your entire point has been invalidated."

(you know...I should sue Newsvine because there isn't an edit button and that's inconvenient)

this guy decided to try to get rich off of his hardships.

I've read a number of articles on this topic, none of them have mentioned any monetary compensation to the plaintiff -- where are you getting your information?

I did find a fairly articulate explanation of why they have chosen a lawsuit as the means to effect change in this instance though. (emphasis mine)

A blind student at the University of California-Berkeley is suing national retailer Target over the design of the company's web site, which is allegedly unusable by the blind. Bruce Sexton Jr., who is president of the California Association of Blind Students, filed the suit in conjunction with the National Federation of the Blind. Their goal is to use the suit to bring attention to the issue of corporate web sites that do not interact well with screen reader technology, which is essential for blind web users. As the Internet becomes increasingly important for daily tasks such as buying products and online banking, blind users are afraid of being left behind—and Sexton hopes to remind companies that this is more than a niche issue.

Finally, please spare us your attempts to compare able-bodied laziness to the hardships faced by a blind person or person with other disability. I think it is a safe assumption that your apartment complex provides parking for people in wheelchairs or with other disabilities. If they didn't, they would be open to lawsuit under the same ADA statutes as Target.

We're not talking about being lazy, we're talking about whether or not there should be a LEGAL requirement for someone to create websites with this accessibility built in. It's understandable why buildings should have to be wheelchair accessible, but websites?

And, of course he's going to gain money from this. Punitive damages.

Josh Pigford:

about the same as me suing my apartment complex because I have to park 100 yards from my home and since I don't like walking they should fix that.

It's not at all like that. People aren't blind because they don't like seeing. Equating a handicap to laziness is pretty offensive. You're post wasn't entirely without a point, but making a statement like that makes it very easy to dismiss.

munzilla:

It's understandable why buildings should have to be wheelchair accessible, but websites?

It would seem that you are in favor of having the market provide for accessibility to web sites, but your building access story is a good example of why that doesn't work. Accessibility is about providing usability for a minority that requires more effort (although decidedly less in the realm of web design versus architecture, in my experience). Does a person in a wheelchair have right to use a restroom at Starbucks? What about a deaf student who's professor has traditionally given oral exams? Now, as a web designer, surely you have some appreciation for how important the ability to use the internet can be. I think everyone here at Newsvine does.

As for requiring every site on the internet to be handicap accessible under penalty of law, that is really probably a stretch. ADA has quite a exceptions for private organizations or individuals have little or no requirements (no one's home is required to be handicap accessible and their blog certainly won't, either). I believe that smaller businesses also have exceptions and they have a number of tax benefits for providing compliance. However, Target is one of the nation's largest retailers and it is not unreasonable for a disabled person to have an expectation to be able to use their web site. The final verdict is up to a jury, of course. At this point a judge (who we can safely assume has more knowledge of the facts and the law than any of us do) has decided that the suit has enough merit to proceed.

If the law says you have to be accessible then that is what Target should have done from the get go.

That's the point. I don't think there is a law. I don't think the ADA (American's with Disabilities Act) addresses websites at all. It doesn't make sense for a site like Target to make a site that's not accessable, but I also don't think they should be able to be sued about it. Now if it is a government web site that is completely different.

use Alt attributes

Also, here's a link to the W3 Website Accessibility Initiative Guidelines and Techniques

There are some useful tools that will check your pages for accessibility problems. They're not full proof, but it's a good way to start understanding the issues.

Bobby accessibility checker.
This version will check a page at a time, you can buy a full version, if you're feeling plush.

TAWDIS accessibiity test.
This is completely free, but doesn't explain itself as well as Bobby and is also much more strict. You can download a version that will scan your whole site.

Josh Pigford,

You had it right the first time "...your entire point has not been invalidated."

The cost associated with fixing Target's website to be 'reader' browser friendly would likely be negligible next to the ongoing costs of maintaining an online catalog 'store' type website and so target cannot plead that including reader browser support in their page design was 'too expensive'. The question arises then as to why they didn't go ahead and include the alt attributes and other accessibility friendly elements in their site design once it was brought to their attention that they had customers who wanted to but couldn't access their service.

All you need to do is have a text description of items and prices in your catalog and stick it in an alt attribute for the product image links - it isn't rocket science and a clever web designer could figure out a way to parse the text from spreadsheets or the database of products or however target keeps track of images of what it is selling to generate and insert the alt text automatically - match the product ID number with description and price - boom that's it. There must be a reason why Target has refused to implement this feature after prolonged negotiation with the National Federation for The Blind (since May 2005). If I were to venture a guess, maybe they don't want web spiders and bots to crawl thier site for comparison pricing information that gets used elsewhere?

You position seems to be that handicap people should 'suck it up, buttercup' and deal with the disappointment of a world that doesn't care enough to make life more convenient for them. I hope you can recognize the difference between convenient access and no access at all. Without the alt='More Cowbell T-shirt - S/M/L/XXXL - 12.99$' included in the image tag for that shirt in the online catalog - no blind person can shop for such clever products online. These people aren't being lazy, they are trying to overcome a barrier to their ability to access a service.

Target may serve a useful role in advancing the rights of Blind people everywhere by continuing to fight this lawsuit. The ADA has no current legal precedent extending to online catalogs and this case if the NFD wins it should clarify an online merchants responsibility to include meaningfully labeled product images and reader type browser friendly shopping cart/check out functionality. These design requirements should in no way hinder or hamper the sighted customers shopping experience as sighted people don't have to read the alt tags if they don't want to. If Target loses the case it will become an effective requirement for all online merchants to design accessible websites (which they should be doing anyway).

I'm not entirely sure that Section 508 would apply to commercial sales sites (and probably not Target as they likely do no business with the federal government), but I do agree that it is smart to comply from the get-go. If for no other reason, it makes your site much more compatable with any number of technologies, many which might not be in widespread use or even been invented yet.

Jason, you are correct. Section 508, as it is written, does not apply to non-governmental sites. However, there is a precedence for applying ADA to business as well as governmental entities, and we do live in a litigious society.

So, I think it's wise for companies to meet the relatively trivial 508 requirements because:
a) it's good business to not turn people away
b) it's good PR to be a good corporate citizen
c) it's good for the long-term health of the company to avoid potential lawsuits, especially when doing so means no significant business impact
and, as you said
d) because building the damn thing right in the first place opens the doors for other emerging technologies that rely on a well-built site.

Again, complying with all the demands of the accessibility crowd can be nearly impossible in a production environment (as I'm sure you know, others have outlined those problems better than I could), but meeting 508 is almost a no-brainer, if the site's being built right in the first place.

Section 508 has nothing to do with private companies. However, it is a pretty well-defined standard, so many companies use it as a guideline for accessibility. However, this guy is suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which absolutely does apply to private businesses which provide any kind of public accommodations. It is modeled on the 1964 Civil Rights Act which banned racial discrimination in any form, by any business, religious, educational or governmental institution.

The problem is, the ADA was written in 1990 and signed into law by the first President Bush, long before the Internet had become a major part of everyday life for most Americans. The ADA mentions absolutely nothing about the Internet, restricting its language to modifying physical "places" for accessibility by the disabled. There have been a couple of court cases which have interpreted the original act to include online commerce, but in the 16 years since the legislation was signed, there have been no significant attempts to amend the law to either include or exclude the Internet from the scope of the ADA. Courts have stepped in to interpret the Act in a couple of jurisdictions with the effect that two of the Federal Appeals Courts have conflicting decisions, which generally means that the Supreme Court will step in to make a final decision. Maybe the NFB is expecting this to be the case that goes all the way to the top.