Websites Accessible to Blind Users?

Interesting news article today in Advertising Age titled "Blind Advocate's Suit Against Target Allowed to Proceed". The article focused on the potential financial impact to companies with large, complex websites who may be forced to re-build their websites to make them accessible to text readers used by the blind.

I admit to indulging in a bit of schadenfreude on this topic. No, I'm not a selfless advocate of the visually handicapped, but I am an advocate of ecommerce site design that is easy to use, fast-loading, and easily searchable. That usually means a site rendered in html with little or no reliance on plugins like Flash for anything important.

I've not read the full complaint, but AdAge referred to the main knocks against Target being the lack of image alt tags and the inability to use the site with only a keyboard (as opposed to a mouse). These are basic, unsexy features of plain html. As long as html is the way we display pages on the internet, including things like descriptive image alt tags should be a complete no-brainer.

Designing your site to be effective at selling both sighted and blind customers should help you stay focused on things that search engines like to see as well, like descriptive links and good copy. It will likewise keep you from straying into unproductive activities like commissioning a Flash entry page to your site. Ugh.

I realize I sound like a Luddite steeped in the stern usability strictures of people like Jakob Nielsen, but only because they work. Technology will march on, making gee-whiz stuff easier to do, more stable, and more accessible. Just remember that gee-whiz for its own sake never sells more product.