Retail giant Target is subject to a class action lawsuit by the National Federation of the Blind because, according to the Disability Rights Advocates, the group acting on the NFB’s behalf:
“…Target.com fails to meet the minimum standard of web accessibility. It lacks compliant alt-text, an invisible code embedded beneath graphic images that allows screen readers to detect and vocalize a description of the image to a blind computer user. It also contains inaccessible image maps, preventing blind users from jumping to different destinations within the website. And because the website requires the use of a mouse to complete a transaction, blind Target customers are unable to make purchases on Target.com independently.”
Target.com does lack some relatively simple code which would make it more usable by the blind. What, if anything, should be done about it?
The Fundamental Issue
In my experience it’s often taken as a given that people have rights to information and accessible websites and that therefore Target is violating the rights of the blind and that hence the lawsuit is a good thing. But in my opinion this premise is false and is based upon on a misconception about the nature of rights, a misconception which destroys the very concept of rights and liberty.
Rights
What are rights? Each individual owns his own life, we are not born into servitude. As Jefferson put it, each individual has the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These basic rights are inherent in our nature as rational beings. Life requires action, we cannot survive by being inert, we need to act to acquire the values our lives depend on, food, shelter, automobiles, computers, medical treatment, etc. These values do not pre-exist and they do not come down as mannah from heaven, they have to be produced. This requires rational thought and action. Rights protect each individual’s freedom to think and act so that he can produce the values his life requires. In a moral society which recognizes these rights, each man if free to think, to choose his own goals, produce his own values, trade them with others and pursue his own happiness.
Rights apply universally to all men equally thus, properly understood, there can be no conflict of rights. You can not have a right to something if that involves the violation of my rights, there can be no right to violate rights. What is the line where one man’s rights are breached by another? Rights can only be violated by physical force. An individual cannot think and pursue the values his life requires if he is subject to physical coercion, when he is forced to do the bidding of another. Ultimately there are only 2 alternatives when dealing with others, by reason and persuasion or by force. The moral society, the civilized society, bars the initiation of force.
These are the fundamental rights. There are derivative rights but they are all specific applications of the basic rights and as such can not contradict the fundamental rights. The right to free speech does not mean you have a right to someone to provide you with a newspaper column, a tv program, or a website. It means no one can interfere with the act of you speaking your mind in what ever forum you have available. This is the only way in which each individual’s right to be free is equally protected. Although we don’t like it when we don’t get what we want, someone failing to provide what we want is not per se a violation of our rights. I can not demand that others provide for my needs and desires, that would mean I have a right to their labor, which I don’t, it would make them my slaves.
Government
What good are rights if they’re violated with impunity? Absolutely none. The institution of government is necessary to order to protect these rights. Government, properly conceived, is not a special entity with special powers, it is just a group of ordinary individuals whose job it is to protect rights we already possess by our nature. Government is simply our collective right to self-defense. We delegate our right to self-defense to the government. Government does not have the power to arbitrarily grant new rights, we cannot delegate a power that we don’t possess. Government has neither the moral right to grant new rights to certain groups nor take them away from any individual or group, including labor unions and companies.
The right to self-defense is the right to use force, essentially government is force, in Ayn Rand’s formulation government is the agency with the legal monopoly on the use of force. A moral government uses its power only in self-defense, never initiating force against its citizens but decisively responding to the initiation of force by criminals. As an agency with a monopoly on the use of force it has to be kept strictly in check otherwise its citizens will have their rights violated by the very organization charged with protecting them. This means government’s only function is protecting individuals from the initiation of force by others, including and especially abuses of that force by the government.
The Target Case
What does this mean in the case of the lawsuit against Target? It should be clear that in this view the lawsuit is not attempting to protect valid rights, but to initiate force against Target. In fact the premise of the lawsuit is profoundly immoral. The notion that anyone has the right to force anyone else to satisfy their needs is irrational and immoral and destructive to all in the long run.
Just as free speech gives you the absolute right to say what ever you want, rational or irrational, erudite or offensive, so individuals (including the companies they run) have the right to make rational and irrational decisions, be inviting and accommodating or downright rude and unaccommodating. However to the extent to which businesses act irrationally, they generally don’t prosper and don’t last long in a free market where their competitors are hungry to claim as many customers as possible.
Ask yourself, do you as a private individual have the right to walk into the CEO of Target’s office, pull out a gun and demand he change anything about the business you don’t like? Advocating that someone else, the big guy next door with the guns or the government, do it on your behalf is no different.
Those who would like to see accessibility practices more widely adopted should do it using the only tool they’re entitled to use, their minds. The market is a great educator. Education, persuasion, boycotting, are legitimate tools of fighting for change in the free society. The gun is not.
Sources and Recommended Reading
“Target Corp Sued for Discrimination Against the Blind” – Disability Rights Advocates available at www.dralegal.org
Second Treatise On Government – John Locke
John Locke’s Political Philosophy – Harry Binswanger (lecture course)
The Law – Frederick Bastiat
“The Nature of Gov” in Capitalism the Unknown Ideal – Ayn Rand
