Business Web Sites Should Be Blind-Friendly

[alaskaguy]

Litigation is making businesses examine whether their Web sites are friendly to the blind. In October, class-action status was granted to a lawsuit against Target, charging that the retailer’s site is inaccessible to blind shoppers. Plaintiffs, led by the National Federation for the Blind, are making their case under the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as two California state laws, claiming they "are being denied equal access to Target stores" because of poor access to Target.com.

Link:
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[cytech]

I am currently trying to teach myself how to make some web sites for my businesses. And this is one of the things I have recently learned. Not really that hard to implement as long as you do it as you go.

 

[balken]

I'll admit my ignorance on this topic. Does a sight-impaired website employ text-to-speech technology? Higher contrast/larger type? Other stuff I am not aware of?

 

[cytech]

I know one blind person I talk to on the internet. And she uses text to speech. It is really amazing the things she can do with no vision on a computer.

She uses a keyboard for typing though. Just text to speech for hearing sites.

Edit: Speaking of building sites, if anyone here is really good with dreamweaver for building sites. I'd like to ask you a few questions, I am trying to teach myself it atm.

 

[cmoneyr]

"are being denied equal access to Target stores" because of poor access to Target.com.

That doesn't make any sense, Target stores and Target.com are two completely different things. Not being able to access Target.com has no bearing on someone being able to walk into a Target store.

 

[bjwitt]

I currently work at disability resources at ISU, I also interned at the Office of Disabiliity Employment Policy at the Department of Labor in D.C. Many websites are already accessible to the blind making it very easy to increase text size also many blind people have different types of programs that will read the text to them. I am glad that more and more websites are updating their services for the blind but there are still a lot of businesses who do not really care about it.

 

[brianhos]

What are they going to do about flash enabled sites? We are currently redoing our site and our product and marketing people are going flash crazy!

 

[cmoneyr]

What are they going to do about flash enabled sites? We are currently redoing our site and our product and marketing people are going flash crazy!

Did they forget that they're not designing a website in 1992?