Digital accessibility and web shops: everything you need to know
Making your webshop digitally accessible ensures that more visitors can use your webshop properly. That means: more satisfied customers and therefore more sales. According to English research, 69% of visitors drop out if a webshop is not accessible. From 2025, webshops will also have to be completely digitally accessible. Is your webshop ready?
Digital accessibility and web shops
As of the European Accessibility Act (EAA), online shops must also start making sure they are fully digitally accessible by 2025. This is a European agreement, which will now also become part of Dutch legislation. This means that digital accessibility will become more important for a large part of entrepreneurs.
Here's what you need to do:
Examine how accessible your web shop is
Solve easy problems right away, this will benefit everyone
Make a plan to solve bigger problems before 2025
Follow a training digital accessibility to avoid mistakes
Build a new web shop: choose a web builder with knowledge of accessibility
Lay out a accessibility-statement what you already do and will do
With these six simple steps, you will ensure step-by-step that you are fully accessible by 2025 and meet the requirements of the European Accessibility Act (EAA).
Legal obligations webshops and digital accessibility
The Equal Treatment on grounds of disability or chronic illness Act (Wgbh/cz) already stipulates that all companies must offer their products and services as accessible as possible. This also applies to online businesses, such as online shops.
There are also international obligations (ADA, AODA, Section 508, etc). So it could be that your webshop should already be fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) by now. So there are already legal obligations for web shops and digital accessibility.
Online shopping is not for everyone
While online shopping is hugely normal for a lot of people. Just buying something online can save a lot of time and sometimes money. Sometimes buying something from an online shop is even necessary if you (temporarily) cannot go to a normal shop.
For visitors with disabilities, online shopping is not always so normal. And that is a missed opportunity. If webshops were digitally accessible, these visitors could save a lot of time. It might also cost them less energy and frustration. In short, more time and energy to spend on other (fun) things.
If I want to buy something, it is very inconvenient for me to go to a shop. I prefer to go to a webshop. But then you have to order something. That's really a hassle.
Peter Lenior (68)
Hearing and visually impaired due to Usher's syndrome
What visitors are you missing?
Actions and product images not "audible"
Promotions are often communicated with images. Beautifully visually formatted banners with a banging discount on them. But reading software cannot make these images properly "audible" if they do not have a good text alternative. The text is also not customisable. This is necessary, among other things, for visitors who use a different colour scheme to make the text more pleasant to read. Your "super-action-banner" will therefore be missed by visitors who are blind or visually impaired or use reading software for some other reason. Therefore, always try to place texts as real text and not "photoshop" into the image. Use a good text alternative for all other important images.
Example of an image with the heading "The cutest craft supplies" and the text "Crafting is an ideal activity for the holidays. Shop the cutest craft supplies here. Shop now". The text alternative is alt="crafting stuff". For users of pre-reading software, a lot of information is lost and a problem also arises with determining the purpose of the link to this image.
The same applies to product images. Product images in web shops do not always have a good text alternative from which the visually impaired visitor can find out what is in the image. Yet this image can be necessary to decide whether or not to buy this product. This is not possible now.
This often goes wrong with different (colour) variants of a product. The main image then has a good text alternative, but the text alternatives of the variants then say nothing about the variation.
Tip: make sure all informative images have a good text alternative. This text alternative should at least tell the main features of the image.
Videos on web shops not accessible
Video is a great way to quickly inform visitors about your product and to entice them to buy it in your webshop. For people who are deaf or hard of hearing, the video is a lot harder to understand if there are no subtitles.
Tip: subtitling does not only help visitors with a hearing impairment. Other visitors are also increasingly watching the video with subtitles, such as people in noisy environments or people who have difficulty following spoken language. Subtitling makes your video more digitally accessible.
Checkout is not possible with the keyboard
Some visitors are dependent on the keyboard. This applies, for example, to visitors who are blind or who use assistive devices because they cannot use their hands (properly). The keyboard is therefore very important for many visitors. So make sure your webshop is fully keyboard-controllable.
Choosing between "Mr", "Ms", "neutral" cannot be done with the keyboard. This is mandatory in this webshop. Checkout using the keyboard is therefore not possible.
In the webshop of one of the Netherlands' largest department stores, it is not possible to checkout using the keyboard. This can be easily solved by adjusting the website's CSS on two lines. Just imagine how many orders you leave out now!
Tip: You can easily test this by navigating through your website with the TAB key. Can you get anywhere?
Accessibility makes your webshop faster and more findable
By making your webshop digitally accessible, you start thinking about your webshop in a different way. The choices you make will increase the quality of your website. Because Google also considers digital accessibility important, your webshop will be found better in Google search results. This is an advantage for all visitors to your webshop. Digital accessibility and SEO have a lot of overlap.
Less than 3 years left to make your webshop digitally accessible
By June 2025, all online shops should be digitally accessible. There will probably be exceptions for smaller entrepreneurs, but a digitally accessible webshop also has advantages for the small entrepreneur.
Three years is a good time to think carefully about digital accessibility. You will probably have to replace your webshop in the next few years or make other major adjustments. Make sure you take accessibility into account right then, so that you attract even more visitors to your webshop.
Need help with digital accessibility and web shops? Then get in touch with us. Our specialists will be happy to help.