Comments on: Target Lawsuit: Settlement Reached

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:49:57 +0000

Thanks, Bruce! Yeah, that’s a serious limitation to the settlement. I fail to understand why using a well-understood and standardized set of accessibility guidelines didn’t make it into the settlement…it inevitably makes me concerned that they’ll instead follow some bastardized set of rules. They may even create a whole new initialism for it!

Perhaps something like “TOATG.”

There are definitely some odd requirements in that document.

By: bruce

bruce — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:03:54 +0000

The other problem is that the settlement only really mentions screenreader accessibility. And there are some reasonable guidelines laid out for Target to follow (with a bizarre construct for within-page links because of an IE bug), but setting WCAG 1.0 as the benchmark would have been much better. And seemingly no mention of accessibility for other groups at all.

(I’ve written my thoughts on my work blog)

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:49:50 +0000

It has, on the other hand, equally demonstrated that it requires a very expensive law suit and several years to gain the awarding of damages, without any indication of long-term gain.

I am optimistic, and hope that the issue will be brought into law sooner rather than later, but can’t help but look at the more problematic issues of the present, too…

Thanks for stopping by, Mike!

By: Mike Cherim

Mike Cherim — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:41:49 +0000

No precedent set, but there was in the awarding of damages. Thus, it will come up again, next time. Though hopefully next time something will become law.