Court allows class-action lawsuit against Target Web site

Computerworld ^ | October 3, 2007 | Linda Rosencrance

[corbie]

Would any Freepers care to reflect on just how to make websites accessible to the blind? Or is this yet another frivolous lawsuit against a corporation with deep pockets?

[txroadkill]

[Wally_Kalbacken]

Target better not settle. Other than tagging items for speech synthesis, which has to be a rather tedious way to surf, I don’t see how you can force an on line retailer to go through the effort. For a small % of the potential market, the cost would be huge and no doubt borne by the rest of us. A disability is a dis-ability, and cannot be remedied by special accommodations in every instance.

[Clock King]

I believe it involves including HTML and XML codes in the web site that can be interpreted by terminal (PC) modified for the blind (braille keyboard for output and input). Just guessing. But this smells like lawyering. Why Target? Why not E-Bay, or Sears, or Wal-Mart? How does this severely impact your life if Target is a less-than-blind-friendly business? Can’t they still go and get products elsewhere?

[tracer]

This is a clear conflict of interest. Everyone knows that Justice is blind....

[tracer]

This is a clear conflict of interest. Everyone knows that Justice is blind....

[muawiyah]

The lawsuit is without legal foundation or merit. ONLY federal agencies are required by law to make their websites accessible to the handicapped.

The website I operated at USPS (as an adjunct to our work) was fully accessible to the blind. It was also accessible to those who are color-blind. Other USPS sites were not always accessible to the colorblind, and having a serious color issue myself, I would spend my evenings, on my own time, tracking down USPS sites that didn't meet the standard and report them.

Nothing like putting yourself beyond criticism before you go on the warpath.

Anyway, the law hasn't changed since I retired, but I suspect the plaintiff's lawyers are trying to get a court to "interpret" the existing law so that it will include the handicapped.

There are a wide variety of software tools out there that make it possible for the blind to use the internet. When this first started, Microsoft didn't have the latest and greatest materials so we had to use a quite cumbersome method to create "tables" ~ I believe that's been correct through the development of new standards and the creation of software that "reads" the tables.

As far as Target's concerned, I wish them well. They should defend this to the max, and considering the fact that they've already fixed the problems, they should point out to the court that they are a leader in the field ~ which they are ~ since no one else outside the government has sought total access.

They can also note that a myriad of commercial and nonprofit NGOs DO NOT YET overcome the colorblindness problem and NO COURT has forced them to do so.

Judges sometimes hold up a tad when they come up against the fact they have the precedent making case, and they could come out of it looking like the fool he or she may be.

[Charlespg]

Or is this yet another frivolous lawsuit against a corporation with deep pockets?

I say its 100% genuine BullSh**

[Lockbox]

Microsoft Narrator, a FREE PROGRAM, is a text–to–speech utility for people who are blind or have low vision. Narrator reads what is displayed on the screen—the contents of the active window, menu options, or text that has been typed.

Narrator is designed to work with Notepad, WordPad, Control Panel programs, Internet Explorer, the Windows desktop, and some parts of Windows Setup.

[tracer]

They don’t call it “Target” for no reason...

[muawiyah]

What’s that you say?

[LetsRok]

I didn’t think that seeing eye dogs could use a mouse.

[LetsRok]

It took long enough to teach the cat to flush the toilet.

[tracer]

Excuse the cyber-hiccup...

[muawiyah]

This software gets better and better all the time. If courts had started beating up on folks 10 years ago, the software developers would have been discouraged from changing the then primitive reading systems and we'd be no further ahead.

The handicapped associations in this country should sue the plaintiffs in this case for attempting to make money at the expense of an improved internet environment for blind and colorblind users WHICH CANNOT NOW BE FORESEEN.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

I’m sure there are ways. I just don’t know why Target should be forced to do business with them. If Target overlooked making their site accessible to blind people, or even decided that they didn’t want to do business with them, that’s Target’s business. But the blind do have a remedy in the free market.

[dan1123]

Would any Freepers care to reflect on just how to make websites accessible to the blind? Or is this yet another frivolous lawsuit against a corporation with deep pockets?

The easiest way to know if your website is accessible to the blind is if you can view the site with lynx or another text-only browser. Blind people use screen readers that read the text into a text-to-speech application to speak it out loud. Normally, the text is spoken as rendered by a dumb web browser, so each table field is read off sequentially in the html and so forth.

The real question is, with web-2.0 becoming popular, should the company be responsible for accessibility where a smarter screen-reader could make it usable? Think of it this way: while the ADA requires ramps for buildings, they do not require the company to provide wheelchairs. If images have proper metadata, and form fields are marked clearly, then an advanced screen reader should be able to provide accessibility.

The most egregious errors in early web site development were the use of flash or image-only websites that had no text in the file to read using a screen reader. Just checking a sample product page at target.com shows that it is readable in lynx and a screen reader should do fine. Checking out may be a problem, but I don't see why it would be.

[Domandred]

Would any Freepers care to reflect on just how to make websites accessible to the blind?

The best I can say is there are braille or text-to-voice readers for computers. However last I heard they were still pretty simple and worked for older versions of HTML but no so much for new fangled web2.0 type stuff.

I don't see how Target is at fault for this lack of technology.

[FMBass]

I can’t see this.

[flaglady47]

Was this lawsuit against Target brought by the Salvation Army as revenge? I like the target of this lawsuit (pardon the pun), because Target was a jerk to the bellringers at Christmas, but the premise of the lawsuit is ridiculous.