Necessary Roughness

CNet.com is reporting that a blind advocacy group is suing Target to force Target to make their website more accessible to the blind.

Sexton, along with a blind advocacy group, filed a class action lawsuit this week against Target, alleging that the retail giant’s Web site is inaccessible to the blind and thus violates a California law that incorporates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The suit, filed in Northern California’s Alameda County Superior Court by Sexton and the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind (NFB), claims that Target.com, “contains thousands of access barriers that make it difficult, if not impossible, for blind customers to use.”

For example, the suit charges that visual information is missing “alt-text,” or invisible code that allows screen readers to detect and vocalize a description of an image. In addition, the site lacks accessible image maps, an impediment to jumping to different site destinations, the suit says. As a result, Sexton, who attends the University of California, Berkeley, says that while he can search the site for specific products, he’s unable to associate prices with those goods.

Are Mossimo, Cherokee, Merona, and other Target brands so important that one needs to force Target to make them accessible through non-visual browsing on the Internet? Rival, Braun, Kitchenaid, Calphalon, Dirt Devil, Black and Decker, and most other brands that Target sells can be purchased elsewhere on the Internet.

Putting alternate text in every image shown on a web page, while good form, can take a significant amount of effort, especially when your site is built to compel purchases through the use of eye candy. Maybe the cost of good design isn’t rewarded with revenue from blind customers. Maybe Target has missed a market, in which case, those that are considerate of blind people should benefit from their dollars. Those companies miss out when we force Target to be considerate.

Take thy money elsewhere, and leave the judge out of it.