And the silence was deafening ;-)

On October 2, 2007, federal district Judge Marilyn Hall Patel granted class-action status to the National Federation of the Blind vs. Target lawsuit, filed in February 2006. This means that blind people throughout the country who have tried to access Target.com can become plaintiffs.

In addition, she ruled that websites like Target's are required by California law to be accessible. (The orginal lawsuit was brought by northern California resident Bruce Sexton.)

This news is HUGE, and could have long-reaching implications in website design for accessibility. So many sites are not W3C-compliant nor accessible, in part because these items are not official requirements. Some designers think it's too hard to make a compliant site. Others just don't know how and think that a second accessible site is required. (Ask anyone using a screen reader about trying to shop at Amazon.com, which runs a not-quite-parallel site.)

What amazes me is how much money Target is probably spending to defend their practices and their website, when in reality, all they needed to do was add alt attributes to images, properly label form controls, and make sure that a mouse wasn't required for navigation.

Next week, I'll be presenting "Accessibility: An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure!" at LavaCon. This session will demonstrate some accessibility issues, show some good and bad sites, discuss how you can make your websites more accessible, and provide a list of applications that can help you gauge the accessibility of your site.