By Andy McCue, 21 September 2006 17:25
NEWS
The UK's top online shopping sites all fail to meet basic web accessibility guidelines put in place to make it easier for people with disabilities such as sight impairments to use the internet.
The study of the top 30 retail websites found that not one homepage achieves single-A compliance, which is the minimum requirement by law for making websites more accessible for disabled people in accordance with the globally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines3 version 1.0.
The retail websites tested included Amazon, Apple, Argos, Carphone Warehouse, Dell, Expedia, lastminute.com, Marks & Spencer, Next, O2, Tesco and Thomas Cook.
All but one website used graphical text that would be difficult for people wearing glasses to read, while 28 sites did not provide appropriate text descriptions for all images to make it easier for blind or partially sighted people to understand visual content.
silicon.com Retail & Leisure
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Pop-up windows are also used on 25 of the websites and can cause problems for people with visual impairments and those using screen magnifiers.
The only retailers on the list credited for making a genuine effort to improve the accessibility of their websites are John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Tesco.
The study was carried out by web usability company Nomensa, which said businesses risk alienating the more than 10 million disabled people in the UK who, according to the Disability Rights Commission, have a collective spending power of £80bn.
The report said: "Almost without exception, online retailers are not taking web accessibility, customer experience or profitability seriously."
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard
No mention of BSI PAS 78?
Strange that the report (or perhaps the research company?) does not mention the new UK guidelines for creating accessible web sites: BSI PAS 78.
(As previously reported by Silicon.com) These guidelines were based on actual research sponsored by the UK DRC.
If correct, these guidelines should be more relevant than "global standards."
2. veronica sinclair
The same goes to many of the online catalogue sites,empire stores for example.
3. Martin Welsford
Maybe Silicon should also take note - I am not disabled but I wear glasses for VDU work and always need to change the font to largest when reading Silicon's web pages. And a lot of other sites as well.
4. Richard
A well kept secret: User style sheets.
In answer to Martin (and Silicon): I've long had to "reverse engineer" the Silicon.com HTML code in order to construct a "user style sheet" which selectively enlarges the Silicon.com text I want to read, without totally "breaking" the page layout.
MS Internet Explorer can be controlled by a "user style sheet." Firefox & Netscape can be controlled by "chrome" files. Opera offers lots of flexibility as standard, and can also accept a user style sheet.
At least the latest version of Silicon.com is easier to bodge!
Of course, we shouldn't have to do this, but it really does help.
5. anonymous
Habitat is Flash-only.
I did point out to them them that this was not very disability-friendly, but they said they weren't going to introduce a non-Flash alternative.
I guess they think that people who have trouble accessing a Flash site aren't interested in nice designs ...
6. Roy Corneloues
Martin,
Accessibility guidelines do not insist on large font sizes but say that sites should allow for the user to change the font saze ti whatever is comfortable for the user.
The fact that you can do this with Silicon.com means that it is accessible in this sense...