Accessibility Issue Comes to a Head Frm: Computerworld - 05/08/2006 By: Carol Sliwa Bruce Sexton Jr. has joined a lawsuit filed by the National Federation of the Blind as a plaintiff alleging that the Target Web site violates the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the Disabled Persons Act. Sexton, who is legally blind, claims that certain information on Target's site cannot be read by his screen-reader software, and that the site requires a mouse to navigate. The lawsuit is shaping up to be a landmark referendum on Internet accessibility, since Target is only one of many sites that could be accused of inhibiting access for the disabled, according to the plaintiffs' attorneys. The problem has been exacerbated by the shift from text-based to visually oriented content that is only likely to continue with the emergence of Web 2.0 technology, which could update information without refreshing the entire screen through the use of Asynchronous JavaScript, XML, and Dynamic HTML. Assistive technology such as screen readers and magnifiers would have no way of knowing what information has been updated unless developers take steps to ensure that the updates are readable. Working within the W3C, IBM is heading up a dynamic accessible Web project calling for such measures as a development syntax that would relay information about a site's accessibility to assistive technology applications so they would know which parts of a Web page have been changed, though the proposals are still in draft form. The Mozilla Foundation included support for the technology in its Firefox 1.5 browser, but the forthcoming 7.0 version of Internet Explorer will not support it. Gartner's Ray Valdes claims that most Fortune 500 companies are largely unaware of how accessible their public Web sites are, and that cost is a prohibitive factor in improving their accessibility. The lawsuit could finally clarify the question of whether the ADA, enacted in 1990, applies to Web sites. Read the entire article at: http://app001.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,111219,00.html Links: Target.com sued by blind student http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060213-6166.html Target Sued for Lack of Accessibility for the Blind http://www.eminentstyle.com/news/?p=3 Blind patrons sue Target for site inaccessibility http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6038123.html http://news.com.com/2100-1030-6038123.html National Federation of the Blind http://www.nfb.org/ Blind Cal student sues Target http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/08/MNGO7H4VBP128.DTL Ray Valdes http://kiosk.gartner.com/sanfrancisco/main/agenda/bio.cfm?SpeakerID=131