A recent ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California raises the bar for online businesses, requiring them to meet the terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act, just as offline business have been required to do since the law’s passage in 1990. The court ruled that retailers may be sued if their websites are inaccessible to the blind.

This ruling is likely to get major retailers thinking about a growing segment of users with disabilities — baby boomers. As baby boomers age, their ability to read tiny grey print decreases, perhaps the mildest form of visual disability. Already a number of major sites — eBay, Amazon, the New York Times — are giving users the ability to resize text, though with some implementation flaws; for example, one site’s navigation bar disappears behind a large Flash graphic as the print size gets bigger.

I automatically ask about accessibility when going to see a new client, and the responses range from great (yes, we’re working hard to comply and any information you have is appreciated), to dismal (no, that doesn’t really apply to our users), to disinterested (what’s that? uh, no, we don’t really do that usability stuff here), to disdainful (and give up the Flash — you must be joking). And these are typical responses, despite the fact that US and Canadian accessibility laws have been on the books for years. But, until now, private industry hasn’t really felt a pressing need to comply. The California ruling may change all that.

It’s unfortunate that legal action had to be launched for this issue to come to a head. As often in business, it takes a threat to the bottom line for the necessary executive will to finally kick in. Maybe the boomer generation — knowledgeable about their accessibility rights, used to getting what they need, and now empowered by this court ruling — will make Web developers, content management vendors, and integrators look beyond the splash and panache of Flash and seriously evaluate the ways their systems assemble and display content for public use.