Dunkin donuts is an American company that sells coffee and donuts. William Rosenberg founded it in Massachusetts in a 1950 lawsuit (“Dunkin Donuts sues coffee shop over “America Runs on Dunkin” - IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Patent Law,” 2020). The company has faced various cyber-attacks as well as website cases. In 2019, it encountered a cyber-attack that was through the use of a mobile app used by its customers. In 2015, it went through another attack, and many of its customers lost their user names and passwords, respectively. In July 2018, a court rule was made after the establishment violated the ADA rule of the disabled acts lawsuit (“Dunkin Donuts sues coffee shop over “America Runs on Dunkin” - IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Patent Law,” 2020). It was a case filed by a blind man who could not access the Dunkin donuts through the website by the name David Haynes. David only relied on the screen reading software while using the internet, and this was not possible on the Dunkin donuts website.
Reasons why Dunkin Donuts was sued
The main reason why the company was sued was that it did not uphold Title 111 of the ADA rule. The rule states that a website compatible with screen reading software should be made possible for access by the blind to the site. The case started in the U.S District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (Huss, & Eastep, 2017). The ruling was made, and it stated that the Dunkins was a public place, and therefore it was not supposed to discriminate against people such as the disabled according to the ADA law. It was proven that Haynes did not have any ability to access information from the website about the locations of the stores as well as not able to buy the gift cards that were sold online. The failure to allow the blind this chance can be said to deny services. They also should be able to access and treating them differently from the normal, which is wrong according to the New York ADA law (Huss, & Eastep, 2017).
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Major Business Pitfalls of a Website
Various pitfalls befall various companies using websites. One of them is the failure to have an overall messaging and positioning strategy of the company. Before creating a site, the company should ensure that evident cooperation and product messaging is done to reach the messages to all customers at a convenient time (Robert, 2020). Thus, this will helps the company to identify the goals and the elements that it needs to use to ensure excellent service is rendered. No customer will be left out regardless of their abilities and inabilities, respectively.
Forgetting about your users is another pitfall that has eventually befallen many establishments (Robert, 2020). If Dunkin Donuts Company had considered this before creating their website, they would have avoided the case that came about with the blind man. The company’s decision on the site has a significant impact on the customers of the company. The goals that will be designed and the programming should consider the customers first before anyone else, respectively. It also includes the platforms that they can surf while using the website.
Having too many cooks can spoil the broth. This applies not only to the kitchen but also to company management. When designing a company’s website, the critical decision should only be allowed to be made by a small group of members who possibly might be internal owners (Robert, 2020). These people have the best interest at heart for the company. Therefore, they will ensure they create something favorable both to the customers, the management of the company, and the establishment itself. It should be designed to the point while creating a company’s website and ensure avoidance of minimal errors.
Ways of Making Sure Your Website is ADA Compliant
A good website can accompany growth adversely. One should consider the following things, respectively. Enabling keyboard navigation is a vital key since it is favorable to internet users with disabilities. However, this is overlooked by many companies' websites. An analysis of about 10 million web pages shows that 98 percent of many websites are not accessible by disabled people because of a lack of ability to navigate using the keyboard. Secondly, one should simplify the visuals on the website since poorly defined visuals challenge the disabled when using the sites. This has limited the number of those disabled to use the website. This includes factors such as poor color contrast, graphics, and text layout. A company should make sure all the visual elements on the website are in the right way and work on the color contrast to enable easy reading of the contents on the website whether the customers may be disabled or not incapacitated.
They are avoiding content that could make people react. The company should ensure that it doesn’t include anything that will trigger any seizure. Therefore no element on the page should flash more than three times per second because this could cause a severe physical reaction for those with epilepsy or any other medical conditions. They are making accessibility a priority to the customers by the customers.
Provide alternatives to audio and video content. The use of images and audio should have equivalent information presented in a transcript. Captioning should also be used in videos. The use of sign language interpretation is very considerable in enabling the impaired to access media easily. Equally, the establishment should test all forms on the company’s website. Ways are another common challenge for screen readers. For it to be truly accessible, the labels must be identified, and visual aids should be used to relay the information clearly. This helps the screen readers to know whether the information they enter is valid or not. Forms should be used to report those who have successful submissions or return the user directly to the invalid field if there was an error in submission.
References
Dunkin' Donuts uses coffee shop over "America Runs on Dunkin'" - IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Patent Law. (2020). Retrieved 25 February 2020, from https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/06/24/dunkin-donuts-sues-coffee-shop-over-america-runs-on-dunkin/id=84038/
Huss, J. A., & Eastep, S. (2017). A Study of Kentucky School District Websites: They’re Colorful and Informative…. but Are They ADA Compliant? Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children , 4 (1), 1.
Robert, C. (2020). The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science.
