ODIN Blog

The American National Federation for the Blind brought a class action lawsuit against target.com for inaccessibility of its website (which is, interestingly, "powered by Amazon.com").

After lots of to-and-fro, news came today that Target have settled, paying $6million into a fund from which those affected by its inaccessiiblity (blind people in California) can claim.

Presumably (Caveat: I am not a lawyer, but I am gorgeous) this sets a precedent in the USA that many businesses will find unwelcome, but which will presumably lead to more accessible websites.

So why only two cheers?

Well, $6million is lots of money, but given that Target gives away $3million every week "to its local communities through grants and special programs", it isn't such a great investment by Target. The terms of the settlement also means that the only people being catered for by this settlement are blind screenreader users:

NFB will run an automated monitoring tool called Worldspace on Target.com every quarter...

Target shall ensure that the Target.com website meets the Target Online Assistive Technology Guidelines [Word document] ... and that blind guests using screen-reader software may acquire the same information and engage in the same transactions as are available to sighted guests with substantially equivalent ease of use.

Upon completion of the changes to Target.com pursuant to Section 6.2 herein, the NFB shall certify the Target.com website through its NFB Nonvisual Accessibility Certification program using the standard techniques and criteria of that program.

NFB will annually report to Target the results of user testing by 5 to 15 blind persons with varying skill levels and using JAWS...

Target shall ensure that complaints received from guests regarding the accessibility of Target.com by those using screen-reader technology are reported to a Target employee responsible for ensuring that Target.com is accessible.

Target shall provide to the NFB a quarterly summary of any complaints received from guests regarding the accessibility or usability of Target.com by those using screen-reader technology...

NFB Nonvisual Accessibility Certification. Upon completion of the changes to Target.com pursuant to Section 6.2 herein, the NFB shall certify the Target.com website through its NFB Nonvisual Accessibility Certification program using the standard techniques and criteria of that program.

I have no idea what the NFB Nonvisual Accessibility Certification program actually entails, but the NFB's legitimate remit probably means it's concerned only with screenreader access:

Working with members of the technology community, the National Federation of the Blind has developed a rigorous procedure by which Web sites and applications that have made special efforts to be accessible to the blind can be identified and recognized.

Accessibility is more than just blind people who use screenreaders. It's a pity (but it's understandable) that the NFB didn't think of other groups with accessibility problems and require development to standards laid down in the internationally-recognised, open WCAG guidelines rather than their own proprietary process.

The danger is that corporations and developers will start developing for the assistive technologies and monitoring tools (machines) rather than people, and that would be a very retrograde step.

Malaysia was served a dish full of Opera Mini last month when the country's biggest telco Maxis ran this TV advertisement, causing downloads of Opera Mini to double.

This is a case of a telco promoting a great mobile browser to boost its data stream usage.

A number of high profile sites have been fixed or are in the process of being fixed this week and last. Many users noticed that Orkut broke in Opera Mini. We were snowed under with bug reports on this issue. The issue was with a malformed meta refresh that was sent to Opera Mini. We’ve been in touch with the Orkut team and they’ve kindly fixed the issue. Orkut especially has many Opera Mini users, as we both share two markets that we are both very strong in–Brazil and India. All those users can get back to having a mobile social life now.

On the subject of Google, Google Docs removed the block on Opera a while ago, but the Spreadsheets and Presentation components still blocked Opera at the door. We’ve been talking to the Spreadsheets team, and that block should be removed shortly. Now we just need to get Google Presentations working and the suite will fully support Opera.

Next up, Apple.com had a number of issues with embedding videos in their pages with Opera. These have now been fixed. One site that has caused Opera headaches for a long time is eBay. We had both spoofs and browser.js patches for this site. We’ve been in touch with eBay for a while now, and we just got informed now that they’ve been working on fixes and eBay now supports Opera. Big thanks for the people at eBay that worked to make sure that long standing Opera issues were fixed.

Finally, the last major site I want to highlight is the new Facebook. When releasing the new version, there was issues in Facebook.JS that caused Opera to not work with the friends list. We’ve been in touch with Facebook and they fixed the issue this week.

With Google Docs compatibility issues slowing winding down, one of the main issues we’d like to fix in the Open the Web team is the compatibility with Yahoo! Mail. This is one of our main blockers, and while Yahoo! in general are very responsive to fixing issue, Yahoo! Mail has always remained allusive. Another issue with Yahoo! is Yahoo! Maps India, which in their own words from the blocking page sucks. I’m not sure if this version of Maps is used in different territories as, taking a random sampling of UK, USA, Germany and Brazil, all of their Maps sites work in Opera.