See also the more recent update on the lawsuit.

One of the original reasons I started this blog was to track information about the ongoing accessibility lawsuit against Target Corporation. Recently, ComputerWorld published an extensive article discussing the lawsuit and surrounding issues. The article contains a number of interesting points, including a great quote on Ajax and Accessibility from Jeff Bishop, a blind application systems analyst at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

"It’s very, very, very scary. Before, so what? You had a missing [alternative-text]tag, but at least you knew there was an image. You could click on it, and maybe you could figure out what it was. Now, you don’t even know where to click. You don’t know how to interact."

Although the article doesn’t deal directly with the Target lawsuit, it does discuss the possible consequences if the lawsuit is successful. ZDnet.com also discusses this question in a lengthy article by David Berlind.

There’s clearly a slowly growing awareness of the potential of the Target lawsuit to radically shift the view of website accessibility in the United States. It’s already become law in the United Kingdom – it may become an economic necessity in the US!

Tags:

  • accessible web design
  • target lawsuit