Website accessibility is an important topic that everyone in an ecommerce team should understand. An estimated 15% of the world’s population, which is more than 1 billion people, have disabilities. That’s approximately one in four adults in the United States, or 61 million people who spend over $200 billion each year.
Did you know there are more then 2 million people in the UK living with visual impairment? It’s also estimated that 4.1 million people will be affected by sight loss in the UK by 2050. That’s a huge audience you could be alienating and losing.
A failure to ensure website accessibility isn’t just a problem for disabled people. It’s also damaging to ecommerce businesses that want to reach those customers. In the US big brands have been sued for failing to meet ADA website standards e.g. Beyoncé and Domino’s Pizza. This costs money and damages brand reputation. Poor accessibility can also adversely impact your SEO, so doing it well can be a competitive advantage.
Web accessibility advice from the RNIB
Building accessible websites can be challenging. Being accessible requires technical skills because it impacts coding as well as design. Not every business is equipped with these skills, so this podcast episode is aimed at accelerating your knowledge.
For our 73rd episode, we’re joined by Robin Spinks, Principal Manager for Digital Accessibility at RNIB and Lori Di Bon-Conyers, User Experience Evaluator. Our guests are experts on web accessibility and share practical insights based on personal knowledge and experience.
You can also listen to our episode on web usability and accessibility ecommerce via the following:
Key discussion points
- How does the RNIB work with and support businesses?
- What is web accessibility and why has it become so important over the last few years?
- How do people with visual impairment experience an ecommerce site?
- What’s the risk of not taking this seriously and how is this going to change in the coming years?
- Can you talk us through the 3 levels of WCAG accessibility; which ones should we be looking to comply with?
- Some ecommerce teams use a 3rd party like AccessiBe; do you have any insights into how effective this approach is?
- The biggest challenge we’ve seen with accessibility is retaining compliance; do you have any advice for how to create a layer of governance?
- What services does RNIB provide to help organisations audit and improve their website accessibility/usability?