Best Buy’s Lively.com Site Not ‘Fully Accessible’ to Blind: Complaint

Best Buy Health violates the Americans With Disabilities Act for its failure to design and operate a website that’s “fully accessible” to blind or visually impaired people who use screen-reading software, alleged a complaint Sunday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that seeks class-action status. Legally blind Bronx resident Isabel Taveras tried in April to use Best Buy Health’s Lively.com website, which sells inexpensive cellphones and medical alert services to seniors, said her complaint, one of a dozen she filed simultaneously against a variety of merchants, all alleging the same ADA violations. She found the NonVisual Desktop Access screen reader she used was incapable of reading the links on the website’s promotional images or its item description links, said the complaint. “For screen-reading software to function, the information on a website must be capable of being rendered into text,” it said. If not, the blind or visually impaired user “is unable to access the same content available to sighted users,” it said. Taveras encountered “multiple access barriers” that denied her “full and equal access” to the goods and services offered on the website to “the general public,” it said. The deficiencies were still there through the date of the complaint's filing, it said.The complaint seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions ordering Best Buy “to take all the steps necessary to make its website fully comply" with the ADA's requirements, plus statutory and punitive money damages. It defines the potential class as including all blind and visually impaired people in the U.S. who have tried and failed to access the Lively.com goods and services that are available to the general public. Best Buy didn’t respond to requests for comment.