Self Targeting
I noticed that Target got itself into a class action suit on web accessibility last week. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but the story popped at me again while I was reading the dead tree edition of ComputerWorld. I'll note that IANAL, but there are some obvious things Target is doing wrong, just from a basic accessibility viewpoint.
Go ahead and visit the site - then put the mouse over any of the images. Notice what's not there? No alt text. Now, I'm hardly perfect about that on my blog; I often let the default "jarober uploaded a file" text stay, for instance. Over on the main Smalltalk site though, I've tried to make sure that there's alt and title text for all the images - if I've missed something, I'd love to hear about it.
The funny thing is, this rather salient fact went unmentioned in many of the stories I saw on this - news.com being a notable exception. There may be other accessibility things necessary, but Target isn't even doing the basic stuff.
Technorati Tags: law, accessibility
Comments
Old News On West Coast
[W^L+] October 11, 2007 20:27:42.523
This case has been going on for quite a while. There was a ruling that said that accessibility laws apply to consumer-facing commercial sites in early 2006. That will eventually filter down to many of the flash-based sites, which seem to be inherently non-accessible. Hopefully, there will be some renewed focus on the W3C's accessibility guidelines as well as Section 508 and similar legal standards, so that site designers will have a clear line by which to measure.