Why Prioritize Digital Accessibility in Your E-Commerce Business?
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E-Commerce is an integral part of life
Did you know that the current digital era has made e-commerce an integral part of everyone’s life? Online shopping has made shopping super convenient, regardless of whether one is buying electronics, clothes, or food. Nonetheless, for people with disabilities, barriers often blur this convenience, which is why digital accessibility in e-commerce has become a key success factor for prominent businesses.
What is digital accessibility in e-commerce?
Digital accessibility in e-commerce refers to the practice of designing and creating online content and applications that are usable by anybody who wants to purchase products or services online, including people with disabilities.
This practice matters not just to people with disabilities but to those without disabilities as well. That is because while it is easy to assume it primarily benefits people with disabilities, its advantages have been reported to extend far beyond that and include inclusivity, legal compliance, improved search engine optimization (SEO), and an enhanced user experience.
How digital accessibility enhances inclusivity in e-commerce?
When you prioritize digital accessibility in your e-commerce enterprise, you make it accessible to a wider audience. This includes people with disabilities, but also older adults and those using different devices or technologies to access your website or e-commerce platform.
For the inclusivity of your e-commerce business, it is not enough to simply focus on your product or service offerings and marketing strategies. You need to establish how you can thrive by meeting the diverse needs of your different categories of customers. That involves ensuring that every visitor to your e-commerce platform can effortlessly engage with your online store.
The critical step to ensuring that every visitor to your online store effortlessly engages with the store is identifying and understanding the common barriers faced by users with disabilities. This enables you to gain useful insights to help you proactively address the obstacles and create user-friendly and intuitive shopping experiences for all.
Empathy, combined with a deep understanding of the unique experiences of people of various types of disabilities, will enable you to design solutions that cater to the diverse needs of individuals with disabilities. It is noteworthy to point out that every barrier you remove from your e-commerce platform is an opportunity to forge meaningful connections, expand your customer base, and build a brand that champions inclusivity in the digital space.
Digital accessibility and legal compliance in e-commerce
Legal requirements for digital accessibility have been established in many jurisdictions worldwide. They require information and communication technology (ICT) products and services, including e-commerce stores, to be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Complying with the established regulations is not just ethically sound but can help a business or organization avoid costly legal consequences.
In the U.S., digital compliance in e-commerce falls under the communication barrier portion of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) law. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the standards for web accessibility and compliance, per case law.
A number of outcomes from case law involving digital accessibility in e-commerce set the precedence for the definitions and intentions of the established accessibility rules and regulations. The basics of ADA compliance according to W3C and how it fits with e-commerce are that the online store ought to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.
“Perceivable” means that everything on the e-commerce platform should be perceived in more than one way. “Operable” means that everything on the platform should be able to be operated in more than one way. “Understandable” means that everything on the store should be easily understood, while “robust” means that everything on the site can roll up to the newest hardware and not break.
Apart from the ADA that targets private businesses, e-commerce stores that are accessible by people in the U.S. and belong to federal organizations or federally funded entities are legally mandated to be Section 508 compliant.
Section 508 is part of a 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that requires all federal electronic content to be accessible. The U.S. Access Board is an independent federal agency that develops and maintains standards that must be met for a business to be said to have met the 508 compliance requirements.
E-Commerce businesses that prioritize digital accessibility through periodic Section 508 testing frequently avoid the risks associated with the legal consequences of not conforming to the 508 compliance requirements, including failure to win federal contracts.
How digital accessibility improves SEO in e-commerce stores?
Digital accessibility practices are known to overlap with SEO best practices. This means that an accessible e-commerce store is able to rank higher in search results, which increases the online store’s online visibility.
Having well-structured, easy-to-read content and making an effort to add alternative text descriptions for images on an e-commerce store can significantly improve the store’s usability and, hence, its ranking on search engines.
Improved ranking on search engines helps to attract more organic traffic to an online store, which is traffic that comes from the search engines. The higher an e-commerce site ranks on search engines, the more likely people are to visit it. This is one of the critical factors that professionals who conduct Section 508 audits for e-commerce businesses, such as ADACP, check for during their Section 508 testing of the digital stores.
How digital accessibility enhances the user experience with e-commerce stores?
Accessibility in e-commerce is about creating inclusive experiences for users of an online store by ensuring that all customers have barrier-free access to the store. It opens up new opportunities to connect with a larger customer base, including users with disabilities.
You can enhance the user experience of your e-commerce store by ensuring it conforms to the 508 compliance requirements on accessibility features, such as clear navigation and readable fonts, content that is of benefit to all users, and generally making the experience of all users more enjoyable and user-friendly.
Need help with making your e-commerce store 508 compliant?
At ADACP, we have a team that is aptly experienced in Section 508 audits for e-commerce stores. The team is always ready to provide you with cutting-edge accessibility compliance services that conform to the 508 compliance requirements for digital accessibility in e-commerce. Call us at (626) 486-2201 today to schedule an e-commerce store Section 508 audit consultation.
E-Commerce is an integral part of life
Did you know that the current digital era has made e-commerce an integral part of everyone’s life? Online shopping has made shopping super convenient, regardless of whether one is buying electronics, clothes, or food. Nonetheless, for people with disabilities, barriers often blur this convenience, which is why digital accessibility in e-commerce has become a key success factor for prominent businesses.
What is digital accessibility in e-commerce?
Digital accessibility in e-commerce refers to the practice of designing and creating online content and applications that are usable by anybody who wants to purchase products or services online, including people with disabilities.
This practice matters not just to people with disabilities but to those without disabilities as well. That is because while it is easy to assume it primarily benefits people with disabilities, its advantages have been reported to extend far beyond that and include inclusivity, legal compliance, improved search engine optimization (SEO), and an enhanced user experience.
How digital accessibility enhances inclusivity in e-commerce?
When you prioritize digital accessibility in your e-commerce enterprise, you make it accessible to a wider audience. This includes people with disabilities, but also older adults and those using different devices or technologies to access your website or e-commerce platform.
For the inclusivity of your e-commerce business, it is not enough to simply focus on your product or service offerings and marketing strategies. You need to establish how you can thrive by meeting the diverse needs of your different categories of customers. That involves ensuring that every visitor to your e-commerce platform can effortlessly engage with your online store.
The critical step to ensuring that every visitor to your online store effortlessly engages with the store is identifying and understanding the common barriers faced by users with disabilities. This enables you to gain useful insights to help you proactively address the obstacles and create user-friendly and intuitive shopping experiences for all.
Empathy, combined with a deep understanding of the unique experiences of people of various types of disabilities, will enable you to design solutions that cater to the diverse needs of individuals with disabilities. It is noteworthy to point out that every barrier you remove from your e-commerce platform is an opportunity to forge meaningful connections, expand your customer base, and build a brand that champions inclusivity in the digital space.
Digital accessibility and legal compliance in e-commerce
Legal requirements for digital accessibility have been established in many jurisdictions worldwide. They require information and communication technology (ICT) products and services, including e-commerce stores, to be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Complying with the established regulations is not just ethically sound but can help a business or organization avoid costly legal consequences.
In the U.S., digital compliance in e-commerce falls under the communication barrier portion of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) law. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the standards for web accessibility and compliance, per case law.
A number of outcomes from case law involving digital accessibility in e-commerce set the precedence for the definitions and intentions of the established accessibility rules and regulations. The basics of ADA compliance according to W3C and how it fits with e-commerce are that the online store ought to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.
“Perceivable” means that everything on the e-commerce platform should be perceived in more than one way. “Operable” means that everything on the platform should be able to be operated in more than one way. “Understandable” means that everything on the store should be easily understood, while “robust” means that everything on the site can roll up to the newest hardware and not break.
Apart from the ADA that targets private businesses, e-commerce stores that are accessible by people in the U.S. and belong to federal organizations or federally funded entities are legally mandated to be Section 508 compliant.
Section 508 is part of a 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that requires all federal electronic content to be accessible. The U.S. Access Board is an independent federal agency that develops and maintains standards that must be met for a business to be said to have met the 508 compliance requirements.
E-Commerce businesses that prioritize digital accessibility through periodic Section 508 testing frequently avoid the risks associated with the legal consequences of not conforming to the 508 compliance requirements, including failure to win federal contracts.
How digital accessibility improves SEO in e-commerce stores?
Digital accessibility practices are known to overlap with SEO best practices. This means that an accessible e-commerce store is able to rank higher in search results, which increases the online store’s online visibility.
Having well-structured, easy-to-read content and making an effort to add alternative text descriptions for images on an e-commerce store can significantly improve the store’s usability and, hence, its ranking on search engines.
Improved ranking on search engines helps to attract more organic traffic to an online store, which is traffic that comes from the search engines. The higher an e-commerce site ranks on search engines, the more likely people are to visit it. This is one of the critical factors that professionals who conduct Section 508 audits for e-commerce businesses, such as ADACP, check for during their Section 508 testing of the digital stores.
How digital accessibility enhances the user experience with e-commerce stores?
Accessibility in e-commerce is about creating inclusive experiences for users of an online store by ensuring that all customers have barrier-free access to the store. It opens up new opportunities to connect with a larger customer base, including users with disabilities.
You can enhance the user experience of your e-commerce store by ensuring it conforms to the 508 compliance requirements on accessibility features, such as clear navigation and readable fonts, content that is of benefit to all users, and generally making the experience of all users more enjoyable and user-friendly.
Need help with making your e-commerce store 508 compliant?
At ADACP, we have a team that is aptly experienced in Section 508 audits for e-commerce stores. The team is always ready to provide you with cutting-edge accessibility compliance services that conform to the 508 compliance requirements for digital accessibility in e-commerce. Call us at (626) 486-2201 today to schedule an e-commerce store Section 508 audit consultation.
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