Judge Rules Sites Can Be Sued Over Design 709
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.'"
How about sites that only work in IE? (Score:1, Interesting)
Not expensive? By what standard? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I smell some consulting blood in the water, here. On the other hand, one of my customers sells eyewear for sports. Somehow I don't think that redesigning their site for the blind is going to be high on their list. The irony is, they can still get sued anyway. Brilliant.
Don't bother reading the article (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding (Score:5, Interesting)
So to say it "wouldn't be expensive" to do this is BS. They'd have to hire someone. That's expensive, especially considering they aren't making a profit right now. It also wouldn't be worth it, there are a whole lot of blind quilters since it is a visual medium. There's nothing stopping a blind person from doing it, of course, but it's hard to appreciate your work if you can't see it.
So ya, I'm sure the expense is minimal for large companies, but you've got to think about the small businesses too. When your entire web team is one person, and your entire staff is like 6 people, hiring another person IS expensive, really expensive.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is Dangerous (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Same in the U.K. (Score:2, Interesting)
If you're building from the start, that is. If you've already got a huge, existing website, then it can be quite the PITA
Not to mention that without any legally-defined standards, you can just be sued by someone with a disability you haven't considered. What if your site's navigation is too complex for a person with mental retardation to use? What if a double-amputee is trying to use your site with no arms? What if someone is dyslexic, and can't read your sites content?
I'm all for accessible content, and sites I develop are generally fairly good in that regard. But I still don't want to be sued because someone with Parkinson's couldn't click the right button.
Re:Why (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, this isn't performed selflessly. Often times, these same people will try to guilt us for being an unnecessary burden on society or claim that our disability is the direct result of their god's divine punishment for sins we've committed/or are about to commit. (Such as the eventual rejection of the religion that repeatedly has shunned them in some form or another.)
The fact is, neither I, nor anyone else with a similar condition *asked* to be born as flawed beings. It was forced upon us without our consideration or consent. So when the time comes where demands payment for our survival in the form of baptism under their rules and we refuse, we're seen as embittered, ungrateful asshats for rejecting their definition of god.
And, in some sense, they're exactly right. Why should I be greatful to sadistic, omnipotent being who supposed has it within their power to prevent such severe disabilities, but chooses not to under the guise of serving some "greater purpose"? After all, I never asked for it, and no one ever consulted me ahead of time to tell me about the "fine print" in the contract of life prior to my birth.
Yeah, I'm a pessimist, and will probably end up in hell assuming this god stuff is even real. But at least I'll take with me the satisfaction of god having my blood on his hands for choosing not to do anything to help me or anyone else of my kind when he had the chance.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
My design background, which was colored by engineering, had emphasized working within the boundaries set by the project and/or needs of the client. You're right that many web site designers feel that form is all that matters, functionality be damned.
In fact, many graphic designers (who would be better called "visual artists") feel that to bend their visual presentation to any other variable is a form of prostitution.
We'll see if this ruling forces come changes to the field, the same way the ADA long ago changed the interior design field.
PS - I know there are many good, even great designers (both on and off the web) who are not as described above.
Re:Flash (Score:3, Interesting)
The good news is that being compliant is not difficult nor is it expensive.
Right.
Re:This is Dangerous (Score:5, Interesting)
And in this case it's working exact like it was designed.
And any web designer who didn't do it the right way has only themselves to blame, because the ADA was passed in 1990.
Re:Bad in every way (Score:3, Interesting)
And, no, the alleged rights you mentioned don't exist, either. They're figments of the socialist imagination made possible by lying about what the U.S. Constitution actually says and clearly intends. When people such as FDR and his friends wanted to change the rules by which the republic was governed, they didn't bother with little things such as legality -- and we're still dealing with the ever-increasing consequences.
David
Re:Not expensive? By what standard? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, no problem there, then, because website accessibility issues have been discussed and understood in professional circles since the late 1990s. That's lots of time. The Web Accessibility Initiative [w3.org], for example, is driven by the same organisation that defines HTML and XML. They've been promoting accessibility publicly since about 1998. So someone could hardly call themselves a web professional and not know about this issue in detail.
Unless you've been sucked in by some fly-by-night operator who thinks that FrontPage and an undergrad arts course are all that's needed to create the public face of your business, you're already good to go. Because you know that standards compliance saves you money in the long run, and that the most common blind person to visit your site is a web crawler, meaning that accessbility and search engine ranking can be directly correlated.
Yep, as long as you diluted the commercial, proprietary snake-oil with just a few dollops of common sense, ensuring accessiblity is a simple matter of picking up the WAI checklist and having an intern spend a few days verifying the few minor problems that somehow leaked into production.
So what was your objection, again?
Re:This is Dangerous (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not trivial. There are programs that will read web pages and then pump them out through a voice synthesizer. The trouble is that the reader programs can't understand all HTML. I've forgotten the details of what fails, but I remember deciding I never wanted to work on a 508-compliant web site. 508 is a separate set of accessibility regulations for government websites [section508.gov]. Information can't be just graphic, for example. On one hand, this is essentially adding another type of browser. But it is more complicated than ms vs. netscape, because you have to have a version of each page that doesn't use graphics.
Re: "Not hard or expensive to comply" (Score:3, Interesting)
The web is meant as a free-for-all where everything exists, and only the worst illegal activities really draw fire.
If a business has a site which doesn't play nice with certain disability accessibility tools, they shouldn't be sued. I don't know what auxilliary benefit flows to the defendant besides "just buying my sweater", but I would be terrified if this spawned a Professional Disabled Litigator.
Wait, that makes my head spin. Isn't the definition of "disability" something that seriously impairs functioning with no clear upside? I can't BEGIN to calculate the consequences of law firms hiring every person ever tagged with a disability to begin testing sites with their accessibility tools. "Nope. This site is incoherent. Case # 1653265. Next!" We all know that Law firms have THE most abusive labor rate ever. Couple this with an unlimited caseload, and suddenly you become able to make a million dollars a year if you are disabled. "Hm. I can work at McDonalds, or I can visit Iraq, doing my Patriotic Duty, get something nasty in my eyes, and make a million a year suing companies for noncompliant websites. "
Re:No kidding (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like a very search-unfriendly site. Adding descriptions - which would certainly help people relying on screen readers - has a knock on effect of those descriptions being indexed on search engines. This has the benefit of bringing in targeted traffic to the website - of people looking for a particular fabric. An immediate 30% boost in natural search engine traffic is not uncommon when making websites more accessible.