No one is accusing retailers of purposely making their e-commerce sites inaccessible to the blind. And even those who campaign for greater accessibility admit that changes can be costly, and that margins in the industry can already be thin without spending money for such a relatively small portion of potential consumers.

“When a website is designed by most organizations, I would suspect that nobody even thinks that a blind person is ever going to use it,” Chong says, “It’s not really about misconceptions: Let’s start with lack of conception at all.”

Chong is hopeful that the recent public attention the lawsuit has generated will encourage retailers to recognize that there is an expanding universe of non-traditional web users – an estimated one to two million blind people, and perhaps as many as 20 million mobility-impaired people, in the United States alone.

“If people can just start thinking about non-visual access at the beginning — if that happens today, then maybe in 20 to 30 years it will be common,” he says. “Right now, though, it’s still too easy to make a mistake without meaning to.” There’s hope, too, he says, for a time when accessibility is taught in computer design schools as part of the regular curriculum, much as it now is in fields like architecture.

As for those who already have their sites up and running, Duncan admits it’s not necessarily an easy or quick fix to make them more accessible, and it might be best to wait for further guidance through the courts and government.

Sophistication levels
Historically, there have been different levels of screen readers, he says, and the less expensive ones tend to be less sophisticated: If a site is designed to be read by even the least sophisticated reader, “it might force retailers to cause their websites to look like a printed book page. Or do you design your site to be interesting and active to sighted readers, but at the same time, realize that only the more expensive screen readers can read it?

“It’s not an insignificant expense to make the decision which way to go,” Duncan says. “You might be damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Another question, he says, is how much information should be included in the metatext that describes a picture for someone who can’t actually see it. If it shows a brown shoe, for example, must it mention the color of the sole or the number of eyelets for laces?

“Again, the more you put in, the more time, effort and expense there is,” Duncan says. “And if you’re putting your time into that, you might not be putting it somewhere else where it’s needed even more.”

For his part, Chong would consider it a great step forward if retailers would at least consider making sites accessible without a mouse. “Until developers can actually broaden their focus, it will be a chronic problem,” he says. “Please, just remember that we buy things, too.”

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