photo credit: Rhian vK

If you have been following the latest news in accessibility and retail, then you’ve heard of the lawsuit between the retail giant Target and blind users of the internet. Let’s say you wanted to to buy something online from Target. You could not, and more importantly, you would be discriminated against. All because Targets website is inaccessibly designed. But because of the lawsuit, the Target  that’s going to be changed. Target has been ordered by the courts to pay $6 million on the class action lawsuit against them.

Here’s a quote from the ruling:

“Furthermore, the settlement requires Target to implement internal guidelines to make its site more accessible to the blind by Feb. 28, 2009, with assistance from the NFB. The retailer and the NFB have agreed to a three-year relationship during which the advocacy group will keep testing the site to make sure it is accessible to the blind who use technologies such as screen-reading software. NFB said it will certify the site through its own certification program once the improvements are completed.”

photo credit: The Wandering Angel
This is great news for web standards, accessibility, and the many disabled and other users everywhere!

I’ve run across a great website that offers article submission service, as well as a place to find great articles. You can find articles specifically on Microsoft Office, MAC related articles, and even Customer service information. But there is so much more categories you can select from. Doing a search of the topic, “web design” brought up 98 results from their site. And believe me, once I begin to post my articles on their site, that number will easily double.

The site itself is written in XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and it is very Web 2.0 looking. Very hot for a marketing site. And if you consider that the many articles they have had submitted on their site, I would say that they are much more than a marketing site for us Search Engine Optimization pros. But their articles are all very well written and informational. And if you are a visitor from a search engine – you will find what you have been searching for, with the tons of articles just waiting to be read.

From what I’ve read on their submission rules, you can place one (1) link back to your website within the actual article, and I highly suggest (love the sarcasm? I expect you to) you place that link.

So check them out and let me know the results of your article marketing with the Web Articles website.

Anyway, I digress…usability is not boring. Accessifying a website isn’t either. As a matter of fact, following accessible, semantically correct, standards compliant web designs is where it’s at amigos! So on to my point.

Plain Old Usability

You see, thinking about usability is as simple as surfing to your website, putting away your mouse, and navigate with only your keyboard. Seems easy enough, right? Well, how about those flash sites now? Can you navigate efficiently? What about those table-based, Photoshop chop-ups? How easy is it to surf those sites?

Creating accessible navigations and layouts is not difficult at all. And even beauty can be created using web standards. So why are so few websites not usable, unless you are a non-disabled mouse user? Easy…lazy designers who don’t care, or are “too busy” to thing about accessibility.

Anyway, the need for speed I feel caused me to think about designing web pages, and how so many designers do not think about what their designs will cost the end user. Yes, I have killer fast broadband, but does that mean I can now craft my sites to use high definition flash movie files? Should I now post 4MB high resolution images? No. And why? Because I would be discriminating against dial-up users.

I know that my stand is seen as a bit over the top, but since I have been discriminated against at points in my life, I refuse to do so to others. That’s what Jesus says also!