No doubt many of us that frequent the NOAH forums are aware of a lawsuit currently winding its way through the US court system. It is case involving the Target corporation, one of the largest retailers in the United States. The lawsuit isn't related to the physical bricks-and-mortar locations, it's about the accessibility of Target's website, http://www.target.com. Without getting into too much legalese, the gist of the lawsuit is that Target's website is not accessible to blind and visually-impaired users. Now, while I don't have first-hand experience in trying to use Target's website with assistive technology, I am a professional web developer, so I am familiar with accessible guidelines and accessibility laws. What makes this court case potentially so ground-breaking, is that the case has now been granted class-action status. Now it's no longer one person suing Target- it's thousands of blind and visually impaired users suing Target. Those users are being represented by the National Federation of the Blind. You can read more about the lawsuit over at News.com.
Other web developers have written some great articles about this lawsuit, and I don't want to rehash what they have said. If you want their perspectives, read Jeremy Keith's article at Adactio.com, Joe Clark's article at fawny.org, and Roger Johannsson's article at 456bereastreet.com, and Christian Montoya's article at his web site. I've left a few comments there, if you care to read them...
Jeremy Keith's article was the inspiration for this post. He wrote about the comments being posted on two very popular web sites frequented by web "professionals" (I use the term lightly, because some of the comments aren't very professional). I'm not going to give them any link love by posting direct links here, but Jeremy has direct links from his site. I would encourage all of us to visit those sites and kindly let the commenters know that they are wrong ;)
As someone who makes a living doing web development, I'm ashamed to be associated with developers who don't care about accessibility. To me, it's a fundamental rule of web development. Sites should be based on accessibility, but too often it is an afterthought. I'm not talking about just adding a few "alt" attributes either- I'm talking full-on structure, content, colors, etc. So many developers don't get it. It's either ignorance at best, or arrogance at worst. Either way, it's wrong, and developers that don't get it shouldn't call themselves "professionals".
P.S. This could apply to other professionals as well (doctors, pediatricians, teachers, social workers, etc...) Being a professional means being better- educated, skilled, or whatever...