Well, here we have it the first (of many, I’m sure) lawsuits against inaccessible Web sites (in America anyway; there have been lawsuits in other countries before).
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer today announced settlements with two major organizations that will make the web sites far more accessible to blind and visually impaired users.
In addition to the steps outline, Ramada.com and Priceline.com will pay the State of New York $40,000 and $37,500, respectively, as costs of the investigation. The Attorney General emphasized that once the companies were notified of the accessibility issues by his office, they worked cooperatively and creatively with his Internet Bureau to correct the issues.
The full press release can be found here: SPITZER AGREEMENT TO MAKE WEB SITES ACCESSIBLE TO THE BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED
Designing Web sites according to Web standards is (and has been for the last couple years) the easiest, most financially responsible way to go, as you only need to create ONE version of the site, and it will work in ALL browsers, text readers, and other devices that can access the internet (the same version can even be your “print version” with the inclusion of a second simple style sheet). Now there are some legal precedents putting teeth in the standards.
It’s not that hard people!
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