Disability Nation Takes a Look at NFB v. Target
1 September, 2008 @ 9:42 pm by LioncourtLast week, the National Federation of the Blind settled out of court with Target Stores Inc. regarding access for the blind and visually impaired to its website and online store for an amount in excess of $6M.
In an insightful entry to their blog, Disability Nation points out the shortfalls of this settlement, particularly where the NFB stands to gain. Most notable to VoiceOver users on the Macintosh platform is that this settlement only pertains to access to the Target.com site with Jaws for Windows from Freedom Scientific. This fails to take into account the millions of visually impaired users of alternative access solutions such as VoiceOver, GW Micro’s Window-Eyes, or any number of other commercial or open source screen access products.
Check out the entry by clicking here. Let us know what you think.
Chris commented:
I’ve been hearing a lot about the settlement of this suit but nowhere in any of the information I’ve read or heard has it said anything about NFB billing Target for training employees in awareness of the problems of the visually impaired. I’m sure Disability Nation is keeping its eyes open on this one but nobody else is publicizing the money situation. The discrepancy in the agreements concerning screen readers other than JAWS isn’t being publicized either. I wonder why.
Jake responded:
Oh come on now, we all know why the screen reader situation isn’t publicized. It’s no secret that if NFB were to have their way, only computers running JAWS would ever be accessible and there would be no options whatsoever for any other platform or access technology, except what the NFB endorces.
Having said that though, can someone explain for once exactly what was wrong with target.com? I’ve never had an issue purchasing products from it under any platform. Granted, I used it in conjunction with my amazon.com account, so if there’s a CAPTCHA or something I wouldn’t have hit it. So far though what I’ve seen is a bunch of incompetent people screaming that target is inaccessible with very little information as to why, or exactly what they can or can’t do.