The sites chosen here are Amazon and EBay. These are very well known sites in UK. Both EBay and Amazon are Electronic commerce websites. They provide online consumer to consumer and business to consumer sales. Both the firms are the largest retailers in the business. Both the firms manage their online websites where online auctions and shopping is maintained, in that people from all over buy, and sell humongous variety of goods. These companies have very reputed websites as all of their business is done online.
This assignment covers the analysis of the websites and various general terms related to the websites. It highlights accessibility of nay website and also the guidelines of website accessibility. Then, the analysis is done for the two mentioned websites regarding their accessibility, and the overview of them. It also highlights the features which are responsible for a good or a bad website. The disabilities of the mentioned websites are also covered along with the ways to remove those deficiencies and make the website more user-friendly and interactive. Overall, this report provides a brief about the two renowned websites in UK, which are EBay and Amazon, and it focuses on the efficiencies and the deficiencies of the websites.
Accessibility in general elaborates if all the groups of people can access a product such as the mobile site, the website or the digital television interface and application (Warren and Warren 2016). Here the groups of people mean the people with all the abilities and the people with disabilities. It refers to the design and infrastructure of the devices, products, services or environments which are accessible by the people with any disability such as disability of vision or lack of body parts such as arm (Lazar et al. 2017). The term can be explained as the capability to access and get profit from any system or entity. Accessibility is different from usability as usability is the extent to which a product or service can be used by the specific user to reach specific goals regarding the effectiveness, satisfaction and efficiency. Accessibility is totally related to universal design indulging the usability of the product (Youngblood 2014).
The term web accessibility refers to the phenomenon where even the people with disabilities can access or use the websites. Going in more detail the term web accessibility refers to the observation, understanding, navigation and interaction with the website done by the disabled people. The disabilities mentioned here are colour blindness, dim vision or visual blindness. They also include the hearing deficiencies that people face, inability to use the mouse, limited fine motor control and orthopaedic disabilities. Web accessibility encircles all the human disabilities which can affect the human’s access to the web and the websites (Hanson and Richards 2013). Web accessibility also benefits the older group of the society including the disabled people. There are millions of people in the world who face with the disability which depresses them of using the web properly. In today’s world, web is evolving rapidly and so is the case with web accessibility. The demand of web accessibility has grown rapidly all over the world in all aspects such as education, managing the processes of the government, employment sector, healthcare, commerce and recreation (Gonçalves, Martins and Branco 2014). This phenomenon limits the gap between the able and the disabled people regarding their power to access the internet. It provides equal opportunity to both the sectors of the society and it can enhance the quality with which the disabled people interacts to or participates actively in the society. The responsibility of making a website is accessible is solely on the web developers and the web software. Making any website accessible includes many factors such as the size and complexity of the site, the type of document that the website contains and the development environment and tools (Loiacono and Djamasbi 2013).
The web content accessibility guidelines are a tier of Web content accessibility guidelines, which was published by the web accessibility initiative of the World Wide Web consortium which is the main international standard organization for the internet (Yoon, Hulscher and Newberry 2016). It is a set of guidelines which specify the things which can help to make the content of the website accessible basically focusing on the people with disabilities. They are also made for the user agents which include highly limited device such as mobile phones. The current version of guidelines is the WCAG 2.0, which, was published in December 2008, and it became an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 40500:2012 in October 2012 (Sams and Ortiz 2016).
The web content Accessibility guideline 2 has four principles, which are Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust. Keeping these guidelines in mind, a good website is said to be POUR website (Billingham 2014).
The Perceivable principle of any website focuses on the senses used by people while browsing the internet. Some of the users of internet may face difficulties with one or more senses while viewing the website. Thus, that category of people had to be rely on the assistant technology to browse the internet. The three main senses that the guideline help with are sight, sound and touch (Park, Lim and Lim 2013). With the implementation of WCGA 2.0, all the users can perceive the information.
The Operable principle deals with the actions took by the people while browsing. These insights the different ways in which a user browses the internet. Some of the users may have motor difficulties while browsing such as difficulty in handling the mouse or the keyboard (Ferati and Sulejmani 2016). This problem can be cured if good keyboard is ensured and no time limit will be set for the user in case of filling out the forms.
The Understandable principle means to use clear terms for the websites, giving simple instructions and explanation of complex processes (Fang 2013). The website should be formed in such a way that the user does not face any difficulty while accessing the website.
The Robust principle is something on which the third party can rely. The website must meet recognized standards using CSS and HTML.
There are three levels of WCAG 2.0 which are A,AA and AAA (Reindl and Linde 2016).
The legal requirements, which are related to the functioning of a website with regard to accessibility are as follows.
If the organization is required by law or it is mandatory to make the website legally. If these requirements are met, and the business case lists with the law and the mandatory factors to make the website accessible (Mourad and Kamoun 2013).
The accessibility of the website must be ensured by checking if all the requirements are met by the website. If the website does not fulfils the POUR guidelines, it is not considered totally accessible and it is legally required for a website fulfil the POUR.
The policies of the website must be in subject with the org.
The organization must be aware of the risks it might have to face if the policies of accessibility are not met.
On 18th of February, 2014, Franklin, an online complaint was filed with the department of Education of the country by Michigan resident Marcie Lipsitt because the webpage was inaccessible. The complaint was took to the court and various actions were taken against the websites. The website owners were given time duration against which they had to make the website accessible or else the website would be banned by the government in the country.
The responsibility to make a website is accessible is totally that of the developers. It depends on the web developer that to what content is the website accessible. The steps that the developers must take to make their websites accessible are as follows.
They should choose a content management system which supports accessibility fully. After the content management system (CMS) is chosen, the developer must chose an accessible theme or template (Alam 2014). For the toolbars and the video players, as well the accessibility must be ensured. The CMS administration options should also be accessible.
The developer to organize the structure of the content must use the heading correctly. The developer must use headings such as (<h1>,<h2>) in a correct and strategic manner for the structured content of the website (Calvo, Kane and Hurst 2014). The developer should adhere the correct order of heading and separate presentation should be used for the structure by implementation of CSS. The heading must not only be chosen because it looks fancy, proper accessibility must be checked and ensured.
All the proper alt texts must be included for the images. For images, the developer must include the alt texts. This must be done so that the user can understand the message conveyed by the image. This is very urgent for the informative images. When creating the alt texts, the text must include the message that is to be conveyed by the image (Aizpurua, Arrue and Vigo 2013). If the image contains any text, the text must be included in the alt.
The links used must be given unique and descriptive names. Proper and descriptive names must be given in the links. Use of “click here” is not treated as descriptive, it is considered ineffective for a screen reader user (Ansari, Hassan and Saeed 2016). For instance, the user with site can scan the link for the page but users who are visually impaired, use their screen reader to scan the texts.
Proper care must be taken while selecting the colours for the website. The common form of deficiency is the red-green deficiency. The other type of deficiency faced by the user is the learning disability. In order to satisfy both the group of users, visual indicators must be used such as the asterisk or question mark (Lazar et al. 2017).
Tables must not be used for layouts. They must only be used to represent the tabular data. Every time the user interacts with the website, the no of rows and columns message is displayed which can be proved distracting for the user (Youngblood and Lysaght 2015).
It should be ensured that all the contents of the webpage are accessible through the keyboard alone in a logical manner.
ARIA(Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and landmarks must be used. These can enhance the ability of the screen readers of navigating and interacting with the content. Examples of ARIA are “navigation” and “menu” and that of landmark is “banner” (Hanson and Richards 2013).
For blind users, they require a screen reader, which reads the contents on the screen to them. Screen reader processes the HTML code of the page actually rather than merely reading the visual contents. For this, appropriate use of HTML codes must be done as it makes a huge difference for the blind users. Use of right code can help the blind users to fill out the web based forms, handle within the text between various headers and sections of the page and navigate the complex data cables. In addition to the semantic HTML, a modicum pure common sense web development can enhance the quality for the blind users (Hanson and Richards 2013).
For partial or low vision, high quality of contrast and large font for the text must be used to make the document readable for the people who have vision problems. The developers must choose proper colour (Loiacono and Djamasbi 2013).
For deaf users, they can see so it is easy for them to read the texts. For them, a translation should be provided for their ease (Youngblood 2014).
For the users who have hearing disabilities, also known as the Dyslexic users, they might find the text confusing and thus clear graphics must be provided and proper symbols must be attached.
The websites which are totally accessible by the disabled users and which follow all the principles of an accessible website. The POUR principles must be followed by the website in order to be considered as a good website in terms of accessibility (Gonçalves, Martins and Branco 2014). The POUR principle includes The Perceivable principle of any website focuses on the senses used by people while browsing the internet. The Operable principle deals with the actions took by the people while browsing. The Understandable principle means to use clear terms for the websites, giving simple instructions and explanation of complex processes. The Robust principle is something on which the third party can rely.
A website is considered bad, if it does not follow all the POUR principle and hence is inaccessible by the disabled people.
Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/)
The accessibility has been surveyed through the POUR principles. The website is adaptable but some contents must be created which can be presented in various ways without losing any information. A label element must be added which surrounds the control’s label. The for attributes must be set on the label elements whose value must be same as teh id value on the control. Apart from this, a title attribute must be added to the input element. A label element can also be created which includes the input. The website is distinguishable which makes it easier for the users to see and the contents indulging separating foreground and background. The website is navigable which means that it provides ways to help the users to navigate, find content and determination of the contents. The contents of the website are readable as the texts on the website can be easily read.
EBay (https://www.ebay.co.uk/)
The website does not have much text alternatives which can create problems for the disabled users to access the website. Proper amount of alternate texts must be provided in the website so that the people with disability can understand the message that is tried to be delivered. The website is not much distinguishable which makes it difficult to see and hear the contents. The website must be made distinguishable so that the disabled people can access the websites.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that accessibility in general elaborates if all the groups of people can access a product such as the mobile site, the website or the digital television interface and application. The term web accessibility refers to the observation, understanding, navigation and interaction with the website done by the disabled people. The disabilities mentioned here are colour blindness, dim vision or visual blindness. They also include the hearing deficiencies that people face, inability to use the mouse, limited fine motor control and orthopaedic disabilities. Keeping these in mind, all the websites must be made accessible and POUR principles should be applied to all the websites. These are certain examples where the government has taken legal action against the websites and thus, it is a legal requirement for the websites to be accessible. The websites Amazon and EBay do not fulfil all the parameters of accessibility. It is very essential for the websites to be accessible as it can limit the gap between the able and disabled people of the society.
References
Aizpurua, A., Arrue, M. and Vigo, M., 2013, October. Uncovering the role of expectations on perceived web accessibility. In Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (p. 74). ACM.
Al Mourad, B. and Kamoun, F., 2013. Accessibility evaluation of Dubai e-government websites: Findings and implications. Journal of E-Government Studies and Best Practices, 2013, pp.1-15.
Alam, N.H., 2014. Web Accessibility of the Higher Education Institute Websites Based on the World Wide Web Consortium and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS.
Ansari, R.F., Baqar, A., Hassan, H. and Saeed, F., 2016. Heuristic, accessibility and usability evaluations of Pakistan’s e-government websites. Electronic Government, an International Journal, 12(1), pp.66-85.
Billingham, L., 2014. Improving academic library website accessibility for people with disabilities. Library Management, 35(8/9), pp.565-581.
Calvo, R., Kane, S.K. and Hurst, A., 2014, October. Evaluating the accessibility of crowdsourcing tasks on Amazon’s mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility (pp. 257-258). ACM.
Easton, C., 2013. Website accessibility and the European Union: citizenship, procurement and the proposed Accessibility Act. International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, 27(1-2), pp.187-199.
Fang, Z., 2013. Survey on the Government Website Accessibility Status in China [J]. Archives Science Study, 1, p.017.
Ferati, M. and Sulejmani, L., 2016, July. Automatic Adaptation Techniques to Increase the Web Accessibility for Blind Users. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 30-36). Springer International Publishing.
Gonçalves, R., Martins, J. and Branco, F., 2014. A Review on the Portuguese Enterprises Web Accessibility Levels–A website accessibility high level improvement proposal. Procedia Computer Science, 27, pp.176-185.
Hanson, V.L. and Richards, J.T., 2013. Progress on website accessibility?. ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB), 7(1), p.2.
Lazar, J., Williams, V., Gunderson, J. and Foltz, T., 2017, January. Investigating the Potential of a Dashboard for Monitoring US Federal Website Accessibility. In Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
Loiacono, E.T. and Djamasbi, S., 2013. Corporate website accessibility: does legislation matter?. Universal access in the information society, 12(1), pp.115-124.
Park, E.J., Lim, Y.W. and Lim, H.K., 2013. An Analysis of Website Accessibility of Private Industries.
Reindl, K. and Linde, S.J., 2016. DOJ Postpones Website Accessibility Proceeding: How Businesses Can Prepare in Anticipation of a Lawsuit and How to Maximize Insurance Once Served. Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal, 28(3), p.15.
Sams, J. and Ortiz, L., 2016. Website Accessibility: Stagnation or Reluctance?.
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Youngblood, N.E., 2014. Revisiting Alabama state website accessibility. Government Information Quarterly, 31(3), pp.476-487.
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