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Disability Law

Target Agrees to Pay $6M, Make Website Accessible to Blind

Posted Aug 28, 2008, 07:15 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Target Corp. has agreed to pay $6 million and make its website accessible to the blind in a class action settlement.

The suit had claimed Target’s website was improperly coded, making it impossible for blind people to use software that coverts text into Braille, the Recorder reports.

Laurence Paradis, a lawyer with Disability Rights Advocates who worked on the case, told the Recorder that certification of the class action and rulings on the applicability of disabilities laws helped prompt the settlement. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of San Francisco had ruled that the Americans With Disabilities Act and the California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act both apply to businesses' websites.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against the plaintiffs in a similar 2004 case after they failed to establish that a website is a place of public accommodation. The plaintiffs in the Target suit argued there was a nexus between its brick-and-mortar stores and the website.

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