In April 2005, several non-profit organizations, including the American Foundation for the Blind, American Council of the Blind and California Council of the Blind, contacted Rite Aid to express concern about difficulties that its customers with visual impairments and other disabilities were having with the use of Rite Aid's Point of Sale (POS) devices. Later, in June 2005, the complaining organizations notified Rite Aid of difficulties that visually impaired customers were having using the company's website. The parties entered into structured negotiations, which eventually led to two private settlement agreements.

Under the terms of these settlement agreements, Rite Aid undertook a nationwide initiative to benefit its customers with visual impairments and other disabilities. As part of the program, Rite Aid agreed to make enhancements to its Web site and to install new point of sale equipment with tactile keypads to protect the privacy and security of all shoppers who have difficulty entering numbers on a flat screen. In addition, Rite Aid agreed to train all pharmacy employees on how to explain to vision-impaired customers the proper use of the point of sale equipment, and they agreed to make regular reports on their compliance with the agreement.

Rite Aid declared its commitment to ensure that www.riteaid.com meets guidelines issued by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (w3c) (www.w3.org/wai). The guidelines, which do not affect the content or look and feel of a Web site, ensure that Web sites are accessible to persons with a wide range of disabilities. The guidelines are of particular benefit to blind computer users who use a screen reader or magnification technology on their computers and who rely on a keyboard instead of a mouse.

We have no further information on the proceedings in this case, but the settlement agreements indicated that Rite Aid would be working on compliance into the year 2010.

Kristen Sagar - 08/30/2008


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