Web Accessibility Gets a Boost In California Court 283
The Register is reporting on developments in a California court case pitting blind users against the retailer Target over the lack of accessibility of Target.com. (We discussed the matter on two occasions last year.) The case is being brought under a federal statute, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and two California laws that are somewhat broader. Even though Target has made improvements to the site since losing the first phase in court, the judge has just ruled that the case is eligible for class-action status. The end result could be mandated accessibility for for all Web sites reachable by visually impaired users in California.
acronyms. (Score:4, Funny)
That's they get for using a WYSIWYG editor to make their website.
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Ooh, wait until the plaintiffs discover this thing called flash.
> We've hit the JACKPOT people, look at this monstrosity, you cant use if you are blind. Let's sue.
Even if you aren't disabled (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only is the layout wildly different from site to site, but also the semantics. And sometimes the access to some services aren't in a menu at all but hidden on a specific page that you don't really think it would be.
Re:Even if you aren't disabled (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess is that one of the questions which will start getting asked is "how do I block visually impaired users in California?"
Re:Even if you aren't disabled (Score:5, Interesting)
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This smacks of bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This smacks of bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Target makes 0.1% more profit this year, no one gives a crap. But if one million Americans who can use a wheelchair are suddenly able to live their lives, this makes a significant difference in the world. (And yes, blindness and business websites can be considered the same as wheelchairs and physical buildings, hence the analogy.) Leave your idealistic philosophy at home and consider the real-world impact of your ideas.
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When an affected group is as small as the population of blind online shoppe
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From another vantage, consider that ultimately, you are forcing the owners of businesses to build wheelchair ramps at gunpoint. This is what you consider justice?
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How is it fair that they should be made to do something at great expense and inconvenience, and you should not?
Because they have more money than you do?
Should Bill Gates pay more for a cup of coffee at the your local diner than you pay for th
Funny how /.'ers are libertarian until (Score:3, Insightful)
FREEDOM OF CONTRACT PEOPLE. GET GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES! LIBERTARIANISM IS NOT JUST ABOUT WIRETAPPING!
Re:This smacks of bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fucking troll? (Score:2)
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You do your cause no credit.
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Interesting dichotomy. You rail against a lawsuit designed to compel accessibility to their services, saying that the stores should be free to choose to cater to these people, but when moderators freely choose to reduce accessibility to your diatribe by moderating you down, you reverse yourself and demand equal respect and accessibility rather than shopping elsewhere for a more receptive audience (while denying Slashdot ad revenue by reducing its readership).
You do your cause no credit.
His "cause" is that no one should be forced to cater to the disabled at gunpoint, which is effectively what federal regulation is.
There's nothing in that philosophy that says it's not perfectly OK to publicly call out a bunch of jackass robot-head mods for the dumbfucks that they are. In fact, it's remarkably consistent with the idea above [slashdot.org] that it would only take a few 'chair bound folks crawling into Target stores on their bellies with the media in attendance to change things. Public spectacle embarrass
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He's complaining about the way certain moderators are using their mod points in the way they see fit, and doing it in such a way that denies him access to people who do not browse comments at a low enough level. Were he to follow his position, instead of complaining and insisting that others refrain from moderating him down for reasons he personally do
Re:This smacks of bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's really good to hear, because it sounds like you have a lot of growing up to do before anyone in their right mind would think you had any morals, judging from the ranting and raving you're doing about enforcing laws that are simply there to force companies to not ignore citizens with disabilities. These laws are in the same boat as the ones that force companies to not ignore citizens who happen to be of a certain race or ethnici
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You are about as naive as they come then, if you seriously think that a significant number of companies would willingly go out of their way to accommodate such a fraction of the market if they weren't legally obligated to. Have you never heard of anything like a Social contract/compact [wikipedia.org]?
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This lawsuit is pretty good. It might actually make the web a better place.
While voting with your wallet works to a certain extent, 99.9% of companies would never willingly cater to disabled people especially blind people.
Is it really that difficult to make a website which works properly?
Re:This smacks of bullshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, I wheel crippled people to restaurants and to doctor's appointments, I've taught blind and deaf relatives both practical matters and technical ones. Failure to make reasonable concessions to accessibility cuts them off from social, economic, and political opportunities. It's penny wise and pound foolish: a store as large as Target, which dominates the commerce in entire towns or neighborhoods, bears a legal and social responsibility to serve that entire community.
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Maybe because the last time we tried that an entire race of people were enslaved and oppressed. And before you suggest that we oh so much more enlightened now, try and remember that the same folks who perpetrated these crimes against humanity are still alive and well. Some are even in positions of power in our country.
Fortunately, there are also a fair represe
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You're joking, but [wikipedia.org].
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I've lived in racist enough places, and worked in sexist and racist enough industries, that such comments from the under-skilled, overpaid, privileged punks who benefited from the instituionalized racism. Such comments don't come from the skilled people in their fields: they come from the people who want to skate by on their "people skills".
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Not equivalent (Score:2)
Do you expect wheelchair ramps on Mount Everest? Are we to forbid people from developing complex mathematical formulae, because some people are too stupid to understand them?
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Is this unreasonable to try to ensure disabled people get a similar quality of service to able bodied people?
Isn't it written into the constitution that its illegal to discriminate?
Now don't you think it would be reason
Fourteenth Amendment (Score:2, Informative)
Isn't it written into the constitution that its illegal to discriminate?
Whose Constitution? In the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from "deny[ing] to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." But what is "protection" and what is a handout? And can states delegate this requirement for "protection" to businesses within their borders? The wording of the Constitution leaves this up to the sociopolitical climate.
What elements enable disabled users to make better use of a site and what create barriers to use?
Here are a few I can think of; see WCAG [w3.org] for details:
I think you're trolling, but here's your answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Free enterprise works pretty well - when everyone decides to spend money in whichever way satisfies their greedy nature, resources get allocated fairly efficiently.
But this is not always the case. For example, if you run a manufacturing business that produces toxic chemical waste, depending on how greedy your nature is, you may choose to just dump your waste in the nearest river. While this works well for you in the short run, it works well for no one in the long run if all businesses operate that way because soon everything would be too polluted to use. So we have government regulations that say 'Hey, if you make waste, you have to pay to dispose of it properly', and then the costs of that get passed on to the consumers of the product that caused the generation of the waste in the first place.
Did you see how that worked? In this case, government regulation ENHANCES the proper allocation of resources, by making sure the entire costs of manufacturing a product is borne by those who use the product.
Legally mandated disability access works in a similar manner. For any given business, the direct cost to them of maintaining access for the disabled may not balance out just not accepting that business in the first place. But, if we don't require that all businesses make reasonable efforts to be accessible to the disabled, then very soon no businesses would be accessible to the disabled. And that's a problem for everyone - because now instead of having disabled people, who through reasonable accommodations made to them are independent productive members of society, we now have disabled people who are essentially locked up in their homes, unable to participate and contribute to society, where we then have to either divert our tax dollars to support them, or let them starve to death (or in the very least, let them out on the street to beg).
Secondary to that, disability access is a bit like health insurance. While most of us are not disabled CURRENTLY, it's quite possible something might happen where we become disabled in the future. An accident, a disease, or shit, we could just get old, and not be able to walk or see as well as we used to. So, as a society, by deciding to make reasonable accommodation for the disabled, we also ensure that in the event we ourselves become disabled in the future, access is available to us. We may not ever need it, but if we do, we'll be glad we have it.
Another point to note here is that web accessibility is NOT just about seeing-eye-dog-blind people. Some people can't see very well just because they get old and lose their vision. That's probably not as big a deal now because most older Americans don't use computers anyway, but in 20-30 years, it'll be quite important as the internet generation starts to lose their eyesight.
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The standards for "web accessibility" also help stabilize the web. Simple text web pages, or ones with well defined ALT tags, remain legible in newer and older browsers. They also make the content more easily searchable and editable by the authors. It's not as "flashy", a pun I choose deliberately. But it usually saves server resources, client resources, and bandwidth to keep the page content centric rather than focusing on the latest "Web 2.0" exciting graphical cuteness, even if
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Re:I think you're trolling, but here's your answer (Score:3, Insightful)
A manufacturer who doesn't properly handle toxic waste is violating the rights of the persons upon whom the toxins impinge. Laws should identify those rights and devise a method for ensuring that rights are not violated (and compensating those whose rights are violated).
A business that doesn't provide handicapped access is violating no-one's rights; the property is privately owned and any visitor is there by permission, not by right. Prov
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The property may be privately owned, but the business operated on the property is operated under permission of the government, because society always have recognized that the public has a common interest in regulating how business is carried out because it is so fundamental to the functioning of society overall and can have so significant effects on society.
Amongst those interest, there is a
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They are voting with their wallet. They are using it to vote via their lawyer.
But seriously... So you are saying that your worth and rights as a human being are determined by how much money you have?
I mean... I could vote with my wallet but it won't change anything other than I'll be sitting at home a lot without electricity, books, electronics, food, gas in the car, or even clothes that aren't falling apart.
I suppose in the end, if I really wanted to vote w
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. --George Bernard Shaw
Damn straight I'm going to try to force positive changes.
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Are you then advocating apathy as a method for positive change?
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Since this is California... (Score:5, Informative)
Public vs. private, monopolist product vs. not (Score:2)
I can't wait for a lawsuit against sites that require Internet Explorer to work correctly.
As a web developer who recently developed a series of XUL (Firefox dependent) apps for the web, I'd like to say f**k you.
Two differences:
Target might do something surprising (Score:2, Interesting)
There are incidences of mass lawsuits invoking the disabilities act even against stores which comply with it. It's not something that you can feel happy defending against and odds are that
how hard can this be? (Score:5, Interesting)
Which makes me think, do they have standards documents for creating a disability accessible website? What all is involved? And what about amazon's "look inside" function? There is no way a text to speech algorithm can read those books because they are images.
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Re:how hard can this be? (Score:5, Informative)
This seems to be a leading theme, presumably by people who do not make sites or make sites that don't work well with disability. The company I work for actually built a site for a foundation for blind people, and they provided a test panel to go through the motions, and a whole set of guidelines to go with it. Let start by saying it isn't just throwing another template at it. If you think you're coding in standards, nice div's and CSS all, and that it just requires throwing a template at it with less bling, think again. Essentially the "problem" is readers, and you'll have to cater for the basic, anal reader html parser. A whole lot of tags you thought were ok, suddenly turn out to be wrong, such as BR. The whole navigation design and design in general will fail, because it's not much fun going into a page for content and being read 50 links first. The whole way of logically setting up text areas and making sure it flows takes a lot of reconsideration. The testing and debugging takes a lot of time, and you -will- bumb into issues you just plainly did not consider because you are simply not blind. Then there's the CMS, and its users should not be able to break any of this. I can go on, but all in all it took about 150% of the time web site builders normally put in a site, complete with "basic" template. That is, if you want to do it 100% right.
Good for F/OSS Browsers? (Score:2)
Conversely, could this be used to push some Ultra-proprietary Screen reader technology only Windows Supports by adding elements that would make FireFox and Konqueror unusable?
What will the outcome be? Is this the sum of all fears?
Solution: (Score:2)
Blindness is not a disability, it is [wikipedia.org] a [hugereviews.com] superpower [wikipedia.org]!
I should totally be made a (highly-paid) part of their blood-sucking legal team.
just crowdsource it (Score:4, Informative)
Federal Government Intrusion (Score:2)
Pile on enough laws and you can destroy the web for everyone. It's not as resilient as you may think.
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This is not equal treatment, it is special treatment.
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Because It's The Law (Score:2)
If I wish to sell software, music, and films that I copied from the internet, why is this business decision anybody else's business? Answer: Just because the law says I cannot do this.
Regulating commerce is well within the capacity of congress and the states, the constitution says so.
Pile on enough laws and you can destroy the web for everyone.
Actually what's destroying the web are
Public Interest, Convenience or Necessity (Score:2)
Target should have no problem continuing to serve their existing customer base -- just without the Federal Government intrusion of the benefits and protections of being 'incorporated'.
The biggest benefit is not directly to the corporation, but to the stockholders. The act of incorporating limits the liability of the stockholders to the value of the stock (i.e. stock becomes worthless). The tradeoff is that a corporation is not as free as an individual to do what they want.
Vision Impaired (Score:2, Informative)
Or there is the alternative (Score:3, Interesting)
Or it could begin a wave of website owners deciding "this shit isn't worth it", and they either turn off their site entirely or at least block known California IP ranges.
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Stupidity and Lobby (Score:2, Flamebait)
So you have a disability. Sorry for you. Why, exactly, is this my problem? If I want my shop to be accessible (or, in my case, my online game), then I'll invest whatever amount of time and effort it's worth to me. If I don't, then you can shop somewhere else.
Regulations like these are ok when it comes to essential and public services, such as publ
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If your a completely private entity, those accessibility rules would not apply. But for businesses open to the public, there's a long history of discrimination that has been held as improper ("Irish need not apply" help wanted signs, real estate deeds preventing sale to Jews, "Whites Only" lunch counters, etc.) and the state and federal governments have the legal power to force you to be open to everyone if you're not a completely priv
Someone else's problem (Score:2)
Pray that you never lose your sight.
What really burns me is that it actually takes effort to make a site inaccessible. The rules of good style (and taste) are often the same rules to make the site accessible. There have even been validation tools for this for a very long time. I actually pointed our marketing guy at one of these to stop him committing crimes against style on the com
Americans With DIsabilities Act (Score:2)
Are they mad? (Score:2)
Re:Yay lowest common denominator (Score:5, Insightful)
Because most people believe the disabled have a right to equal access to services as everyone, firstly because those who use assistive technologies have no choice and secondly it's not their fault. Not only that but there's really no excuse for designing an inaccessible site, it's not difficult, in fact in most cases it's easier. Inaccessible usually means Flash/Javascript/IE only sites, which not only stops access for the disabled but for those of us who hate Flash/Javascript/Internet Explorer too, it also implies the Web designer/developer is incompetent.
There are circumstances where it's impossible to cater for people using assistive technologies: like wheelchair access to listed buildings (not uncommon in Europe) or prohibitive cost for small businesses to provide wheelchair access, I don't think Web sites are one of them though.
Think of it this way: do you use Firefox? Do you think all Web sites should work given your chosen technology? Or is it your job to somehow adapt to people who only code for Internet Explorer? Is it their fault that you don't use Internet Explorer? Frankly too bad on you. Life sucks. Now imagine someone's showing you that attitude, yet your body is setup such that you can't use anything but Firefox. If you ever go blind from looking at too much Natalie Portman smothered in hot grits I hope you remember your post.
Back on topic: the biggest problem I see for site owners is CAPTCHA as screen readers can't read the majority of CAPTCHAs out there, everyone had better make sure the system they use allows for a sound file alternative. reCAPTCHA [recaptcha.net] looks like a good service, you get to encode books at the same time as fighting spammers! Personally haven't used it on a project, but did notice the sound file alternative link.
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And when I can launch a class-action suit against those websites, your analogy would be accurate.
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I don't disagree with the base premise you have going here but I do draw the line at government. The handicapped are expected to abide by the rules made by their elected officials and as such deserve a say in what those officials do. They can't make an informed decision if the information is denied them. There is no reason technically that a site can't be A
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http://207.165.235.33/Library/magazines/MagazineListBraille.htm [207.165.235.33]
Movie theaters DO have headphones in them.
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2005/dec/dec05a_05.html [state.ny.us]
So, both of those issues ARE things that in the past blind people have either sued or used market pressure to get.
NEXT!
Re:Yay lowest common denominator (Score:4, Insightful)
At some point almost everybody suffers a "life sucks" moment, and we create rules to try and fairly take care of people during those instances. If you have a genetic defect, why can't health insurance companies deny you coverage? If somehow you lose your job, why are you allowed to get out of debt by filing bankruptcy?
Sure life sucks, that doesn't mean society can't help with "reasonable accomodation."
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And while you are right a lot of people want "accomodation for them", the law (the ADA for example) just require you to make "reasonable effort" for people with disabilities.
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Re:Yay lowest common denominator (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is blind. Are you aware of how many people tailor Web sites for that thing?
I have a sneaking suspicion you've never used a screen reader, nor are you a proficient Web designer. Where the text is on the page is irrelevant, as long as the page has good structure: headings, lists, blockquotes, em tags, strong tags etc. a screen reader will be able to read it perfectly well. The Web is for communicating information, text is the best way of achieving that in most cases and where images are used all that's needed are the trivial additions of alt tags to provide a quick description of what the image contains.
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However, to a person who's been blind their whole life, the two-dimensional layout of a webpage is often irrelevant. It doesn't matter to them that one button is to the right of another most of the time. It's far easier to find something by name than it is to find it spatially.
Since you've never seen a screenreader before, check out this video:
http://video.yahoo.com/video/pl [yahoo.com]
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Re:Yay lowest common denominator (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really know the answer, but I can offer you some speculation: If you're offering your services to the general public, then you'd be unfairly discriminating against disabled people. (This is assuming, of course, that the changes are reasonable. Ramps leading to the doorway aren't the same as denying wheelchair access to a roller coaster.) Now, that's a little broad/extreme, so I'll water it down a bit. A place like Target sells everyday needs to a broad range of people. If a wheelchair-bound person cannot buy something like toilet paper, they're in trouble. I think the idea is to make the world a little easier on people that have these problems.
"Why isn't it their job to somehow adapt? Is it my fault someone else can't see, hear, walk, or think clearly? Frankly, too bad on them. You got a shitty roll of the dice. Life sucks."
Well, I suppose that's one way to look at it. Unfortunately, that's not something you'd be saying if you were stuck in a wheelchair. Those people with a shitty roll of the dice are doing the best they can with the technology available to them to continue to lead a productive life. If common everyday tasks are difficult because a big company like Target didn't spare a little extra expense to resolve the issue, it becomes offensive. "Why is it so frickin hard to build a ramp?! I just want some f'n toilet paper!"
Okay, that's wheelchair access to a physical property, so that example doesn't work well in this discussion. So what about this particular case? From what I've gathered, they could, without a lot of effort or expense, update their site to work for the blind. They're not doing that. In theory, they could just take their business and move on to Wal-mart or Amazon or something. But the problem is that disabled people have had to fight battles like this for decades. If they don't win something like this, the risk is other companies will ignore them because they're not big enough to be profitable.
Life sucks for these people, but it doesn't have to. That's the point. When a little more thought goes into the design of a building or a webspace, it makes life easier for everybody, but it also makes life livable for those with disabilities. Life can suck. That roll of the dice can happen to you at any time.
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The problem is when the money that is required to be spent on those ramps could have been used more efficiently some other way (perhaps hiring servants for those N people in wheelchairs in the area would have been cheaper), or for some other more beneficial purpose (perhaps the
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It's also, and this may matter more to you, stupid.
A cooperative society walks all over an uncooperative society. Hint: You will never, not in your whole life, be worth as much to us as Stephen Hawking. We'd rather accommodate him than you.
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They are adapting - they use assisstive technologies like screen readers. The law essentially says that you have to meet them halfway, because they can't come all the way to you. Screen readers aren't magic, and they're not string AI, they need pages to be built within certain guidelines or they can't do their job properly.
As for why the law exists, your attitude and tha
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Here's one problem (Score:2)
Presumably, people without flash (e.g. visually impaired people using Lynx) will not find the promotions and will end paying more.
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"but what are the "and headings are missing that are needed for navigation"?"
I would guess that means things like tables are missing properly formatted (meaning they can be picked up by the naked eye) headers. There are numerous accessibility guidelines that websites are generally required to follow, unfortunately many developers are completely unaware of them or put them at a very low priority. Its more fun to develop that neat web 2.0 javascript widget than it is to ensure all your inputs have proper
IMG tag inside a H1-H6 tag (Score:2, Insightful)
"They probably use IMGs instead of H1-H6 tags, either because they are using a non-standard font, or some design in the headings. There are a few workarounds for this. You can use H1-6 in your markup, and replace it with images in the CSS (assigning an ID to each H1-6.)"
Actually, it is easier then that. Just simply put the IMG tag inside of a H1-H6 tag and make sure the ALT option has text. If the image is not used, the ALT text will show up in the H1-H6 font and style. Also screen readers and site i
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1. Preferences -> Content -> uncheck Load Images Automatically; optionally turn off Flash also.
2. Load the page (target.com)
3. View -> Page Style -> No Style (turns off CSS)
Actually target.com is a little better now than before they filed the lawsuit, but you can still see some really confusing things, like a bunch of images that link to something but without alt tags. And apparently some of
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I took a brief look at it from the standpoint of a former web developer who had to deal with a lot of accessibility defects, it does look like they have a long way to go. Missing alt attributes for images, bad label elements, much of the navigation was based on images, it would be very difficult for a screen reader to pick them up.
It is perfectly possible to have a neat looking webpage while still being accessible, it just requires to make alternative constructs for the screen readers to go by (they can
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There is no magic wand to make a blind person capable of safely driving a car. There are a number of fairly resonable guidelines [w3.org] that give disabled persons with assistive technologies a fighting chance of using your website. Better still, many of these guidelines are firmly in the "what's not to like?" category for non-disabled users - e.g. not abusing Flash, allowing end-users
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HTH. I swear, most Myspace weenies must use it in write-only mode.
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Since I've been getting older and my eyes weaker, this has bcome a pet peeve of mine. The main reason I love Firefox on my laptop compared to the IE6 I'm forced to use at work is the ability to hit ctrl+ to make text readable - when the web site actually lets it work!
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Edit-preferences-content (tools-options-content on windows)
Under "Fonts & Colors" click advanced
Set your minimum font size.
Alternatively, in about:config, you can edit font.minimum-size.x-user-def (and anything else that happens to be under font.minimum-size.)
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HTML was designed from the very beginning to convey information in a way that allowed it to be presented in whatever way the user desired. That web DUH-signers have wrecked this idea does not mean they ought to get away with it.
The government is there for the "weak" individuals, tha
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And these days, with CSS and all that jazz, that is even eas