A blind university student has filed a class action lawsuit against Target Corp. The plaintiff alleges that the website discriminates against visually impaired users of its services because the website is inaccessible using screen reader software.

Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore, an advocacy group that’s also a plaintiff in the suit, said today that the complaint is based on the theory that online portals of ‘brick-and-mortar stores’, or actual physical places, must be equally accessible.

‘Target is one of the biggest companies in the country’, Maurer said. ‘One of the things we’re trying to do is change the way this is done.’

Blind people access Web sites by using keyboards in conjunction with screen-reading software which vocalises visual information on a computer screen.

But Target’s site lacks ‘alt-text’, an invisible code embedded beneath a graphic on the Web site that a screen reader could use to provide a description of the image to a blind person, the suit said.

Target.com also has inaccessible image maps, the suit said. Image maps, when clicked on by sighted users, allow the patron to jump to other destinations within the Web site. But since Target’s site requires the use of a mouse to complete the transaction, it prevents blind people from making purchases online, the suit said.

Some companies, like Wells Fargo Co, have Web sites that are accessible to the blind, said attorney Mazen Basrawi, an attorney with Disability Rights Advocates of Berkeley, which represents the plaintiffs. …

But many other Web sites can’t be used by the blind, Basrawi said.

The lawsuit is a timely reminder of the importance of complying with web standards and accessibility guidelines. If a commercial website — be it target.com or johnsplumbing.com.au — denies a portion of its users access to goods and services normally available to others, the organisation may be contravene anti-discrimination legislation and face significant penalties.