Blind Student Sues Site Owner Claiming Civil-Rights Violations Over Alt Text

Suit charges retailer's Web site cannot be used by the sightless

[walkman]

"...Target's site lacks "alt-text," an invisible code embedded beneath a graphic on the Web site that a screen reader could use to provide a description of the image to a blind person, the suit said."

"...A blind person cannot make a purchase independently on target.com."

[sfgate.com...]

what if one puts the wrong alt text, and a blind person buys the wrong thing relying on it? Not trying to be funny, but it can happen.

[minnapple]

I have mentioned the proper use of alt tags and how it relates to this situation many times.

I has fell on deaf ears.

Bad pun but I had to make it.

Keyword spamming images doesn't really add that much value to rankings and it is kind of telling a blind person that the sign says walk, rather than don't walk.

Is Target at fault? That is up to the justice system.
Does Target have people making bad decisions? Yep.
Any company does.

Being an insider to Target's operations from a supplier end, I have stronger opinions, but I am not going there.

[bedlam]

Just in case anybody was wondering, my earlier code example (message 209 [webmasterworld.com]) rather stupidly shows two alternate methods of creating the links in an image map as one method...

Either of

<a>

or

<area ... />

elements is acceptable inside a

map

element. So it's this:

<map name="explodedViewMap" id="explodedViewMap">
<h2>Parts in the assmebly</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="northwestPart.html" shape="rect" coords="0,0,50,50">Northwest Part</a></li>
<li><a href="northeastPart.html" shape="rect" coords="50,0,100,50">Northeast Part</a></li>
<li><a href="southwestPart.html" shape="rect" coords="0,50,50,100">Southwest Part</a></li>
<li><a href="southeastPart.html" shape="rect" coords="50,50,100,100">Southeast Part</a></li>
</ul>
</map> 

...OR this:

<map name="explodedViewMap" id="explodedViewMap">
<area href="northwestPart.html" shape="rect" coords="0,0,50,50" alt="Northwest Part" />
<area href="northeastPart.html" shape="rect" coords="50,0,100,50" alt="Northeast Part" />
<area href="southwestPart.html" shape="rect" coords="0,50,50,100" alt="Southwest Part" />
<area href="southeastPart.html" shape="rect" coords="50,50,100,100" alt="Southeast Part" />
</map>

-b