Designing a Theoretical Guideline for E-commerce Brands to Make Online Shopping Experience Accessible to Blind Users | Nuzhat Samreen

Overview

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused mostly all businesses to move online because of reduced in-person shopping experiences. And despite most brands having the best social media and branding strategies, they fail to make their platform accessible to everyone. Online shopping has become vastly popular and is easily accessible to people all over the world. Considering the accessibility criteria many brands are yet to incorporate it into their online interfaces. Designing attractive web layouts that are usable but cannot be used by everyone is something that most brands have been following. Most visually impaired Internet users rely on assistive technologies like screen readers or screen magnifiers to render sites perceivable and operable (Herndon, 2019) Despite the existence of having an accessibility guideline for more than a decade, disabled users are still finding problems using websites because of the way the content is put out (Information Architecture). The knowledge we as designers have regarding visually impaired users’ problems while surfing the internet is quite low. This research aims to list out minor and major problems that print-disabled users (blind, partially sighted) are encountering on the web.

Simple interface solutions can easily improve the users’ experience on the web, although for a more impactful improvement, a combination of user experience and design solutions might be the answer.  

Problem Statement and Considerations>

Accessibility and Online Shopping>