Judge Rules Sites Can Be Sued Over Design

BcNexus writes "According to the Associated Press, a California judge has ruled that a lawsuit brought against the Target Corporation may proceed under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The catch here is that the suit, leveled by the National Federation of the Blind, concerns the design of Target's website. Could this set a precedent and subsequent flood of lawsuits against websites? What if another design is not tractable?" From the article: "'What this means is that any place of business that provides services, such as the opportunity to buy products on a website, is now, a place of accommodation and therefore falls under the ADA,' said Kathy Wahlbin, Mindshare's Director of User Experience and expert on accessibility. 'The good news is that being compliant is not difficult nor is it expensive. And it provides the additional benefit of making accessible web sites easier for search engines to find and prioritize.'"

this is just the beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

The next "target" [foreyes.com]

And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

And in other news, the National Association of the Deaf is suing Apple because iPods to not adequately provide for the music needs of the non-hearing. Also, the National Association of the Mute is suing AT&T because telephones do not adequately provide for the communication needs of the non-speaking. Multimedia and communications companies have also been informed by the National Association of the Blind, Deaf, Mute, Crippled and Crazy of their intention to file a number of lawsuits.

Accessibility

[bryan8m]

I'm considering adding braille to my website and building ramps between pages for those in wheelchairs.

Re:Flash

[Toba82]

That's the one good thing that can come out of this, I guess.

Re:Why

[Headcase88]

So we don't die from from a disease borne from unsanitized telephones.

Re:Flash

[finiteSet]

Bye bye roughly 90% of flash sites.

Or they'll just make them really, really big, with bright, contrasting colors and a short audio clip that reads the contents aloud.

One crucial point not addressed by the ruling

[koreth]

Can you sue over designs that are so obnoxious they cause you to go blind?

Re:Flash

[owlnation]

Bye bye roughly 90% of flash sites.

I think I can sum up the views of many by saying, "YAY!"

Solution: M$ Word Intraweb.

[twitter]

Dateline, Nighmare in Redmond: Microsoft Declares Victory Over World Wide Web.

Putting their best spin on recent web news, Microsoft spokesvole Andy Nonymous told reporters gathered at a press conference about M$'s radical new Interweb.

"For years we've been telling the free software terrorists that they were bad for business and their work was hurting disabled people and killing puppies, this drives the point home."

"We stood silent as Sendmail replaced the far more disable friendly US Post Office, but formulated a plan." At this he cackled like a fiend. "We made M$ Word the default editor for email, though most people rejected this. It really hurt us to see the demise of 3m word attachments as a means of conveying 1k of text."

"As Apache on Linux [netcraft.com] took over the world wide web, we were stunned and shaken that people who wanted to stay in business avoided our IIS unless we paid them to use it."

"It was in Mass. that we finally realized that our email strategy right all along. M$ Word is the only blind free format in existence and we are now pressing for it's use as a standard for all interweb pages! This is indeed the cheap and easy solution the good people at Mindcraft are talking about. Victory at last."

A stunned silence settled on the conference. One or two hands came up but and Nonymous nodded off stage.

A huge, sweaty, bald man with a chair then danced onto the stage carrying a $2,000, 75lb office chair raised over his head. "Any questions?" he asked through a truly demented grin [google.com]. And there were none. He had fucking killed them.

Re:S-T-U-P-I-D

[tf23]

Your assumption that a website is visual, is shortsighted.

Read this comment [slashdot.org]. The author is right on the money.

lifetime appointment judges

This is an entirely different topic, though I totally agree with you.

Re:One crucial point not addressed by the ruling

[Watson Ladd]

Yes. But no one has tracked the operators of goatse.cx down so you are out of luck.

Re:This is Dangerous

[pizpot]

I know, www.target.txt

oh please oh please lets do that one!! Cool eh?

Re:This is Dangerous

[iamhassi]

"If you're blind and deaf, ouch, sucks to be you. :("

No, it just means there's more websites for you to sue ;)

Step 1: be born differently than 99% of the population
Step 2: make the other 99% bend over backwards to accomedate for my disability and if they don't, sue!
Step 3: profit!

This makes me soooo not proud to be an american.

There is a silver lining though: if they do make all business sites capable for screen readers to navigate than that means cellphones, pdas and other portable devices should be able to reformat the website for easier viewing on smaller screens or even reading them outloud. Maybe someday you can "call" a website and hear it over the phone and make selections that way.