Neocon Blues

Target just settled with the National Federation of the Blind for about 6 million dollars. Why you ask? Because their website is not sufficiently amenable to use by the blind.

Target 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 assistive technologies such as screen-reading software. NFB said it will certify the site through its own certification program once the improvements are completed.

The issue centres on the Americans With Disabilities Act, a 1990 law that requires retailers and other public places to make accommodations for people with disabilities. Target had argued that the law only covered physical spaces.

“We feel that it is a wake-up call to companies that have websites that are selling goods and services,” said Christopher Danielsen, a spokesman at the NFB. “They need to pay attention to accessibility. It is the right thing to do.”

It isn’t that I don’t think blind people ought to use computers–as technology improves there is little doubt that the blind will find it increasingly easy to use the internet. However, can Target reasonably expected to shoulder the burden of catering to every disability group with a resourceful lobby whose constituents have any level of difficulty using computers? I tend to agree with Jacob Sullum of Reason Magazine on this one.

If so, this suggests that blind people either don’t buy much or generally seek assistance when they shop. Otherwise, businesses that catered to blind shoppers would have a competitive advantage over those that didn’t. Assuming there just isn’t enough revenue at stake to justify a complete Web overhaul, why should Target bear the cost of making its site accessible? If our legislators have decided that helping the blind and otherwise disabled is a Good Thing, they should have the guts to allocate taxpayer money for the purpose, instead of imposing unfunded mandates on businesses.