Accessibility in the news: guidelines and lawsuits
In the United States target.com is being sued by the National Federation of the Blind for having an inaccessible website. It seems that rather than just being merely incompetent, target.com actively refused requests from blind users to make their site more accessible. It’ll be interesting to see what the outcome is, and whether a similar, but unsuccessful case against Southwest Airlines in 2002 has set a precedent.
Now, if target.com were UK-based then the sort of document that might help them to realise the error of their ways is PAS 78, the newly-published and forgettably-titled web accessibility best practice guide from the British Standards Institute. Unfortunately, at 30 quid a pop I suspect that it’s going to be a case of preaching to the converted. Some people reckon that this is just taking the pas (ho ho!).
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I'm Stuart Church, a user experience consultant with Pure Usability in Bristol, UK. Sensorydrive is my personal blog and covers user experience design, information architecture, product design, psychology, research methods, perception and pretty much anything else that takes my fancy! You can find out a bit more about me if you want...
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Have you bought a copy? Is it worth the money?
Yes, I have bought a copy. It actually cost me £35.25 (£30.00+VAT) for the PDF download. Is it worth the money? Absolutely not. Now that I’ve seen it I have no idea who will read it or find it useful. If you know about accessibility there’s nothing new for you. If you don’t, the whole thing is remarkably turgid and dull and framed in standards-speak. It’s supposedly aimed at people who are commissioning websites. If I were commissioning a website and knew little about accessibility, I’d like to read something that’s about 90% shorter and 90% cheaper. There’s also no executive summary, which is a crime of communication!
Thanks for saving me £35.25 then!