If your site has image-map tags or images without alternative text, you could be next The California Association of Blind Students set its sights on Target.com as part of the first salvo against websites that do not support software capable of interpreting text on the screen for blind readers. The lawsuit claims "Target thus excludes the blind from full and equal participation in the growing Internet economy that is increasingly a fundamental part of daily life." Blind Advocacy groups believe the lawsuit against Target is valid on the premise that eCommerce websites must uphold the same disability standards as the brick and mortar counterparts. When websites use image maps and lack alt-text for images on the site, reader software developed for blind people stops functioning correctly. Federal laws governing disabled patron access to eCommerce websites do not exist in the US yet. Target.com, DailyTech.com and AnandTech.com are all examples of websites that use image mapping, but with the Web 2.0 trend, image mapping is just the tip of the iceberg. AJAX enabled websites, in particular, are completely unusable to viewers with text recognition software due to the dynamic nature of the site content. Undoubtedly, this is not the last time we will hear about this. http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=755 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/09/BAGQHH5H7D1.DTL http://www.helpedia.com/news/.Blind.student.Sues.Target.com.For.Lack.Of.Accessibility-news89.html