Target's A.D.A. and N.F.B. Issues
This past February Accessify was the first to report about the National Federation of the Blind filing a lawsuit against Target over its website and it’s inaccessibility issues. Last week, a judge ruled on Target’s attempt to get the case dismissed from the California court. Target tried to get around the Americans with Disability Act by claiming their website didn’t fall under the act, under which the lawsuit made the claim, the judge on the other hand disagreed and said that A.D.A. isn’t limited by “brick and mortar.”
The refusal to dismiss the case on those grounds, is a big
win for the NFB, and I’m sure it’s got the people over at Target.com a little
irritated, and, I bet the folks over at Amazon are now a bit concerned. Why Amazon? Take a look as to why (if you didn’t already know):
Target.com is an Amazon store. This means, Target’s website infrastructure is powered by Amazon, which makes it’s a little more difficult for Target to just go out and add all the ALT text that the NFB is citing that is missing in their website. Ever take a look at Amazon’s site for A.D.A. issues? You guessed it – no ALT text on their images either. So why Target and not Amazon? Well the speculation around the industry is that Target has a “physical” structure, Amazon doesn’t, and that’s why the NFB went the route it did with the lawsuit.
Taking it a bit further, I took a look around Amazon’s website to see who else they prominently show as an “Amazon Store”. I found Office Depot is powered by Amazon.
So my curiosity is now piqued, how exactly is this site handling the A.D.A. Interestingly enough there’s a mix of use on ALT tags on OfficeDepot.com as the image below points out on just their homepage. It looks like the images that are more system generated in a somewhat random fashion (I’m sure though there’s some kind of business logic rules in action here), don’t have the ALT text attached, but the other images that are prominently displayed in focused promotions do have the ALT text.
This really makes me wonder how much involvement Target has
in their site updates, and web page creation. They must have some kind of involvement if Office Depot can update, it can’t all fall onto Amazon,
especially since Amazon likely doesn’t know who the true Target customer base
is, Target knows that. Obviously Office
Depot has some type of control, due to the mix of use and non-use of
ALT text in image tags, so Target's got to have some type of control too.
The other question that really puzzles me, is WHY NOT? Why in the world wouldn’t you use ALT
text? It’s just really befuddling to me as a marketer at heart – its another
opportunity to sell to another (different type of) consumer. Not only that, but a website
that passes usability factors, the search optimization just flows in
naturally. So why Target isn’t doing
this with their website? To be honest and in it is just my opinion, it just wreaks of laziness in coding and just
plain out cutting corners.
Other sites discussing the Refusal to Dimiss the NFB’s lawsuit against Target:
Comments