This is the first of three blogs on accessibility for Web site owners and designers

Last August the Web world was shocked to hear that mega-retailer Target had agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Bruce Sexton, a blind California college student who complained that the Target.com site was inaccessible to him and other blind consumers.  Retail site owners lit up the blogosphere with complaints that the courts have stomped on their rights and with predictions that greedy lawyers would use this precedent to extort billions of dollars from any deep-pocket online retailer they could find.  Six months later, however, the buzz had died down and the real lessons to be learned from the Target case are now clear.

Above: Target’s public relations nightmare

The real reason that Target was forced to settle for such a significant amount was not because of overzealous government bureaucrats and greedy lawyers, but because Target stubbornly refused to acknowledge that online accessibility was at all their responsibility.  Instead of seeing the requested changes to their site as an opportunity to expand access to their online store, Target pushed back on what they saw as an illegal effort by the government and special interests to dictate to them how they should run their business.  Target contended that the cost of the suggested changes to Target.com would be prohibitive and refused to make any of the requested accessibility changes to their site and instead spent money building a legal defense. 

If you understand that ecommerce sites are the equivalent of brick and mortar stores to the 18.6 million Americans who reported having a disability that prevented them from easily getting out of their homes (http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-17.pdf ), then you also understand where Target went wrong.  The National Federation for the Blind (NFB), who joined Mr Sexton as a plaintiff, convinced the judge to declare the suit a class action, which meant that just about any disabled person in the US who could prove they had been barred access to Target.com could also become a plaintiff.   The NFB and other advocacy groups began to publicize the case and the mainstream news media began to cover it. When Target realized that this was quickly spiraling into a public relations nightmare, they wisely decided to quickly settle.  Considering the potential reputational damage, $6 million was a cheap way to make it all go away (for the settlement details, go to http://www.nfbtargetlawsuit.com/ ).

Below are the four steps you should be taking now to make sure your site doesn’t get ‘Target-ed’:

1.  Become aware of the laws that pertain to the accessibility of your site

The Target case hinged on the US federal ‘Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)’ law and the ‘Unruh’ California state civil rights act.  The ADA is a comprehensive federal civil-rights statute protecting the rights of people with disabilities and ensuring that ‘reasonable efforts’ are made to give them access to places of ‘public accommodation’.  The statute does not mention the Internet or Web sites, however, and the courts have not provided much guidance on the applicability of the ADA to online stores.  For this reason, the NFB also leveraged the California ‘Unruh’ statute that states that all state citizens, regards of disability (among other categories), are “entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever”.

Take the time to get up-to-speed with the federal or state laws that may apply to your Web site.  If your site is international, you may need to consider the laws of the various countries your customers reside in.  Once again, the WebAIM site is a good resource for investigating accessibility laws around the world.

Important caveat:  this post is not meant to be legal advice - please contact your lawyer or internal legal department for the most accurate and up-to-date information before you act on anything.

2.  Educate your site’s development team and content creators on Web accessibility

Train developers and communicators on Web accessibility so they understand how to identify issues and, more importantly, how to fix them.  There are many great online sources of Web accessibility training, but WebAIM (www.WebAIM.org) and the WorldWide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) are good starting points.

You can also create a low cost accessibility lab by installing demo or freeware versions of assistive technologies, such as screen readers and screen magnifiers, on a spare PC.  Engage the disabled community in your organization or city - invite representatives in to give assistive technology demonstrations to your staff or to evaluate your sites.

3.   Assess your site’s accessibility

Matthew Kreeger, a partner at the law firm of Morrison Foerster and a former software designer, suggests that Web sites prepare for accessibility suits by first taking an inventory of how easy it is to navigate their site using a screen reader.  “We have found that this first step helps clients determine the extent of any potential issues and puts them in  a position to evaluate any programming updates or modifications” (http://www.mofo.com/news/updates/files/14568.html) . 

There are also several free online accessibility assessment services that can be used to get an understanding of what issues may exist on your site.  WebAIM’s WAVE assessment tool is easy to use and comprehensive.   A complete list of free and commercial assessment tools is also available at the WebAIM site.

4.   Create a remediation plan and measure your progress against it

The National Federation for the Blind (NFB) has been approaching major online retailers and financial services providers about the accessibility of their sites for years.  In almost all cases, these businesses worked with the NFB to develop plans for improving the accessibility of their sites over time.  As long as the business showed reasonable progress on their accessibility plan, the NFB, courts, and regulators were happy and enforcement actions were not pursued.

A good example of an accessibility remediation plan can be found at the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) site.  Scroll to the bottom for the timeline - note that they have taken a multi-year phased approach, and that they are keeping track of their progress as represented by the percentage completed next to each active task.  Also note that HHS is working towards compliance to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act - this is an accessibility statute that covers government Web sites and the Web sites of any private businesses interacting with the public on behalf of the government.  We will discuss Section 508 in more detail in the next accessibility blog.

Summary

According to the US Census Bureau, nearly 8 million Americans have visual or motor skill disabilities that impact their ability to use the Internet.  All commercial Websites should be aware of how their site is experienced by the disabled and come up with a plan for correcting any issues.  To ignore the pleas of this large and growing sector of the Internet population is to take on significant legal and reputational risk.

To avoid Target.com’s fate, Web sites should be gaining awareness of accessibility, assessing the accessibility of their pages, and creating and acting on realistic long term remediation plans.

In the next two accessibility blogs we will learn techniques for advocating and winning funding for accessibility remediation tasks, and for how to integrate accessibility remediation into a traditional Web development project.