Accessibility and Online Shopping

With the emergence of the current digital era, we are all subjected to a degree of new challenges when trying to navigate websites. Screen readers existed even back in 1989 with the launch of the first web browser. Some of the web accessibility highlights during this time frame included the creation of the first accessibility guidelines in 1995, the same year Amazon was launched.

The pandemic has created more non-accessible online stores, as retail businesses hurried to add online sales capability, throwing up hastily-created websites that are hard to navigate even when fully able.

We’re talking about issues like:

●      Failing to support screen readers that blind users need to navigate online;

●      Not making a site keyboard navigable for users who can’t point and click on a mouse

●      Confusing layouts that leave users with cognitive decline bewildered and lost;

●      Hard-to-read displays with low contrast ratios, poor color choices, tiny text, etc. that make it difficult for users with low vision or weak eyes to read instructions, descriptions, guidance in form fields, and more;

●      Presenting vital information such as price and product description in an image without descriptive alt tags, so screen readers can’t pick it up;

●      Using flashing gifs and animations that can trigger dangerous seizures in users with photosensitive epilepsy;

●      Hiding crucial details about delivery and returns in fine print that is almost impossible to find on the site, and/or in jargon that is unclear to many visitors.

How can E-commerce site owners respond to this?

Some of these are easy to solve without any special training or tools, like choosing large fonts and high-contrast ratios, drawing an intuitive layout, and rewriting sales descriptions in easy-to-understand language. But others require specialist input, such as the inclusion of ARIA features for screen readers and support for full keyboard navigation capabilities. Even seemingly simple steps, like adding a descriptive alt tag to each image, can be overwhelming if you sell thousands of products, each containing multiple images. This is where my research proposal can come in handy. By designing a guide for User Interface designers where all the accessibility features would be listed out. This would make it easier for designers to incorporate them while designing e-commerce websites. The WCAG guidelines available on the web are useful for developers, but this guide would help designers educate themselves about the accessibility criteria and help them in incorporating these into their initial designs so that developers would not have to go through the entire webpage, again and again, to check for accessibility issues.

Committing to inclusive design not only makes a retailer’s website accessible to customers with disabilities but also creates a shopping environment that is easier for all customers to use.

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