Welcome to the Escape Blog

Here is an interesting article on 456 Berea St covering a story in the US where the National Federation of the Blind
(NFB) has brought legal action against Target corporation (a major
US-based discount retailer which operates more than 1,300 stores in 47
states) because their web site is not accessible. The NFB has raised
the issue with Target Corporation before:

"The website is no more accessible today than it was in May of last year, when we first complained to Target."

Accessibility for web sites (in my opinion) is mainly about working to standards. In the UK we have the DDA Accessibility law which covers the legal requirements, we have the W3C guidelines to help us, we also have so many tools available to achieve the standards, and also, it isn’t something new - as web developers we’ve known about these issues for some time.

However, so many businesses are not implementing the necessary strategies towards achieving compliance. What is even scarier, when you read some of the comments on the 456 Berea St Article, is the disdain towards the disabled. Shockingly unbelievable and also inexcusable.

I bet these are the same people who are so bent on not complying, but will blindingly moan about how Google doesn’t work in their favour and will pay thousands of pounds a month on adwords.

Sorry, did I mention that even if you did choose to ignore the needs of the 8.5 million disabled users of the Internet in the UK; a well built accessible web site communicates with other web sites, including search engines, so much better.

Why? Because they all speak the same accessible language!