Hattip to Joe Clark.
The Target v NFB lawsuit seems to be cruising to the netherworld of settlement. Meaning that it will be even longer until there is substantial (or intelligent) legislation or precedent establishing the responsibility of companies in developing an accessible presence online. Who would have thought it would take legal action to make a site easier to use and accessible, thereby increasing the potential reach to customers?
Joe Clark posted extensively about the agreement reach between Amazon.com and the NFB. I can’t begin to recount his excellent survey of the situation, so I’ll only “stand on his shoulders” and deliver some of the highlights.
- The NFB reached an agreement with Amazon.com, as Target uses the Amazon.com engine. The agreement covers third-parties, such as Target.
- Amazon has an Accessibility Committee?
- The agreement is posted as a scanned PDF on the NFB site – Irony abounds . . .
- Apparently, there is a new assistive technology called “screen-access software”. I’ve never heard of it, but apparently this is how a screen-reader is being referred as in the NFB-Amazon agreement.
- Amazon.com promises “full and complete access by the blind”. Is that truly accessible though? What about everyone else that may simply need ZoomText or just larger fonts and not have the code blow up? Why is accessibility only defined by blindness?
- Joe specifically asks whether or not this action will result in the outdated, nested tables, invalid CSS, and abundance of JavaScript will be replaced with valid and semantically correct code that is built using progressive enhancement, or will provide graceful degradation into other devices.
Good questions.
What an amazing opportunity to create a fully CSS compliant site that will be fully accessible and interoperable, regardless of device. I could use Amazon.com on my mobile phone or any other device besides a browser if that were possible. When will these companies realize the business case for accessibility? The more people that can access your site, the more potential customers you will have. Especially as mobile browsing increases, interoperability and degrading gracefully will be critical to success.
Accessibility, in the most liberal definition of the word, is just smart business.
