18 September 2006
Companies have been urged not to exclude blind users by providing poor accessibility features on their website.
Steve Jacobsen, a 3M computer analyst and board member of the Minnesota Federation of the Blind, has claimed that companies risk losing business by failing to provide options for blind and visually impaired users.
"The issue isn't that my life is gonna stop if they don't fix it," Mr Jacobsen remarked in the Star Tribune.
"The issue is that corporations using the Internet… shouldn't lock us out."
Mr Jacobsen was commenting on comments made by major US retailer Target, after a legal ruling found that the company was breaking the law by failing to provide a service for blind users.
Target claimed that its website "complies with all applicable laws".
However, Cynthia Waddell, a California-based lawyer, professor and author of the federal government's web accessibility standards, claimed that the Internet should be more inclusive.
"Technology changes, but civil rights do not," she stated.
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