[1] The case challenged whether the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, specifically Title III's provisions prohibiting discrimination by "places of public accommodation" (42 U.S.C.

Some of these categories cover public entities such as restaurants, parks, hospitals, museums, offices, theaters, hotels, and stores.

With the Americans with Disabilities Act being enacted before the Internet existed, the term "public accommodation" has been historically interpreted as a physical place.

The ADA does not clearly address accessibility to the Internet for people with disabilities, along with not defining "public accommodations" as either a physical facility or place.

The NFB requested that Target optimize its website accessibility for the blind by adopting standards promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board's Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 standards, specifically encouraging Target to adopt the alt attribute for clickable images featured on the website.

In its petition, NFB alleged that in one instance, when a blind user visiting this website selected an image of a Dyson vacuum cleaner using his or her tab key, the voice synthesizer on the computer would say "Link GP browse dot HTML reference zero six zero six one eight nine six three eight one eight zero seven two nine seven three five 12 million 957 thousand 121" instead of a useful description of the image.

"[1] On October 2, 2007, the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of California certified a nationwide class action pursuit against Target Corporation consisting of all legally blind individuals in the United States who had attempted to access Target.com and as a result were denied access to the enjoyment of goods and services offered in the defendant's stores.

[8] The court previously denied Target's motion to dismiss and upheld NFB's argument that websites like Target.com must be accessible to the blind under both California law and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Any future disputes involving the agreement were required to be resolved through the order of meeting and conferral, then mediation, and finally submission to U.S. magistrate judge, if a resolution could not be reached.

Target issued a response by claiming "We believe our Web site complies with all applicable laws and are committed to vigorously defending this case.