Kulture Konnect Blog

Even though the COVID19 pandemic hit many businesses hard, there was a record-setting growth in 2020 and 2021. Unfortunately, inflation and economic insecurity have contributed to a dip in online shopping. But, what does that mean for businesses like yours? Well, since people are more reserved to spend their money, it's more important now than ever to provide your e-commerce users with a frictionless buying experience.

In and effort to give a better experience, online businesses use data to personalize messaging and run holiday promotions to entice shoppers to look at them. But they neglect to include a website accessibility plan in their marketing efforts, which prevents millions of shoppers from being able to fully participate in the holiday season or to have a good shopping experience anytime throughout the year.

Shopping online can be a tough journey for people with disabilities

It is normal to encounter that almost every site on the cyberspace has accessibility issues. However,  e-commerce sites are worse than most and ignore key features such as being able to view products, make purchases or book an appointment. A few more reasons online shopping is hard for disabled people are: 

• Nowadays, everything is done and shared through social media or email, which are marketing channels that are known for not being accessible or completely accessible
• During the holidays and throughout the year businesses make updates to their websites, which are normally performed by an untrained staff member. Businesses tend to overlook this intentionally or unintentionally for various reasons, including wanting to keep it in-house or not wanting to incur in an additional expense for foundational health management. Unfortunately, this introduces new accessibility issues if the updates are not done correctly
• The holiday rush brings chaos to the normal operations of any business, which is ten times true for an online store. This often overwhelms customer service and operations teams, which can make it harder for people with disabilities to get assistance

Start making your ecommerce ADA compliance ready

Website ADA compliance continues to be a pressing issue for every business, especially if you have an online store. So, your best next step is to take at least the basic steps to put your website and ecommerce site on the path of accessibility.

• Alt Text – Having the perfect image to showcase your product is very important, but what about making sure that everyone knows what your images are about — even if they can’t see them? With Alt text you can write a description of an image that screen readers can read out loud — or convert to Braille — for people with visual impairments, sensory processing disorders, or learning disorders. Unfortunately, many businesses forget to provide alt text or simply don't care and it is very common to find alt text that simply says "image01.jpg," which does not help at all anyone with a visual impairment
• Audio and Video – Audio and video are a must-have in today's marketing environment. But it’s important to do it in a way that doesn’t exclude anyone. This means adding captions and descriptions, synchronizing captions, checking captions placement, providing simple access to controls and not using autoplay
• Colors and size- Color can be a decisive factor for people with disabilities to stay or move on from your site. Color contrast is usually measured as a ratio, where a higher number means a greater degree of contrast between the two colors. For example, white and black have a contrast ratio of 21 to 1 while red and green have a contrast ratio of 2.9 to 1. So, make sure you use the correct color contrast for your site. In addition, font size and weight also affects readability and legibility, so if your font is large or bold, you may be able to get away with a lower contrast ratio, but always be careful! Remember that WCAG recommends a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 between a foreground element (like text) and its background.
• Emails – Marketing your website is intimately tied to your email marketing. Unfortunately, because each email client is built differently, making sure that your email renders correctly on every single platform can be a nightmare. This is why many businesses choose to do a flat image for their emails instead of coding it. But this is not good for a disabled person! Imagine how much information you're packing in that flat image and how much information is that disabled person missing: product names, sale prices, special offers... No screen reader could keep up with it. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to optimize your email: use tables, underline links, make links descriptive

Conclusion

Planning for the holidays can be overwhelming, but dealing with a website that is not accessible no only has an impact on your potential customers, but also on the performance, searchability and compatibility of your online store. By taking action on the most basic things, you are setting up a model that pays off big in the long run. From there, you can expand for an ongoing 360º action plan to take care of your website's foundational health.