An article in the SFGate about a new Accessibility Suit details a suit brought against the mega-retailer Target by a blind UC Berkley student regarding the complete inaccessibility of their website.

But Target’s Web site, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court, does not support such software, making the site useless to the blind—a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act and various state laws.

Advocates for the blind said the lawsuit is a shot across the bow for retailers, newspapers and other businesses that have Web sites the blind cannot use. They chose Target because of its popularity and because of a large number of complaints by blind patrons.

This shows how important consideration of accessibility of a website should be. Business can be seriously affected by this, perhaps not by a huge loss in business but certainly bad publicity, private civil suits, and governmental fines.

Many states and national governments have started to slowly implement laws and regulations regarding the accessibility of web content. Accessibility (and the fall-out that occurs when a site is inaccesibile) will start to take up more of the media’s time than ever before while we move closer and closer to an internet driven economy and world.

Is your site accessible?