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.'"

Comments

Same in the U.K.

[Phil John]

It's the same situation in the U.K. The Disability Discrimination Act specifies that any place of business must be accessible to people with disabilities (including web-sites).

I see the legislation as a "good thing", the internet is the great leveller, many people who otherwise would find it hard to make purchases or converse in real life find fewer barriers.

It goes further than just visually impaired visitors however, you have to take into account things like colour-blindness, essential tremor (so big chunky web 2.0 buttons are fine!).

All of our sites and web apps (including admin backends) have been fully DDA compliant for several years now. Being compliant makes business sense, it doesn't cost much more to build it in from the start and then you increase your potential client base - plus you get a warm fuzzy feeling when you know you're not preventing people from accessing your services.

More information

[fragmer]

Yahoo Finance News article has detailed information on the ruling.

Does not establish a precedent ...

[slightlyspacey]

Just a few years ago, a federal judge ruled that the ADA only applies to physical spaces. From the article:

In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies only to physical spaces, such as restaurants and movie theaters, and not to the Internet.

"To expand the ADA to cover 'virtual' spaces would be to create new rights without well-defined standards," Seitz wrote in a 12-page opinion dismissing the case. "The plain and unambiguous language of the statute and relevant regulations does not include Internet Web sites."

Since you now have a couple of federal judges in different districts disagreeing with each other, the Supreme Court may ultimately decide this one.

Re:This is Dangerous

[theodicey]

The reasonable tactic would have been to approach Target and offer to work with them to find a solution. Not only would it be cheaper for all sides in the short and long terms

They did. Target refused to make any reasonable effort to make their site accessible.

"The NFB wrote to Target in May, asking it to make the site more accessible, according to the plaintiffs. Negotiations broke down in January, which led to the filing of the lawsuit, the organization said."

I know that bashing lawyers is instinctual for some people, but at least think first, OK?

Wrong. This isn't a decision, just preliminaries.

[Animats]

This wasn't a decision that websites have to be "accessable". The judge just refused to dismiss the suit in the preliminary stages. The judge also refused to compel Target to make the site "accessable" during the litigation. So this just means that there's enough of a question to proceed to trial. It's not a "decision". Computerworld has a better story on this.

Re:This is Dangerous

[jZnat]

It's cheaper, easier, and more efficient to design the site in the first place so that it falls back to an accessible view in a text-based web browser, screen reader, or braille terminal. You also get a lot more choice in design via CSS with your semantic XHTML (although you might need to throw in a few div's to prevent it from looking like complete ass in IE, but that could also be done via DOM manipulation, so whatever).