The Barriers to Online Clothing Websites for Visually Impaired People: An Interview and Observation Approach to Understanding Needs
Open accessAbstract
Visually impaired (VI) people often face challenges when performing everyday tasks and identify shopping for clothes as one of the most challenging. Many engage in online shopping, which eliminates some challenges of physical shopping. However, clothes shopping online suffers from many other limitations and barriers. More research is needed to address these challenges, and extant works often base their findings on interviews alone, providing only subjective, recall-biased information. We conducted two complementary studies using both observational and interview approaches to fill a gap in understanding about VI people’s behaviour when selecting and purchasing clothes online. Our findings show that shopping websites suffer from inaccurate, misleading, and contradictory clothing descriptions; that VI people mainly rely on (unreliable) search tools and check product descriptions by reviewing customer comments. Our findings also indicate that VI people are hesitant to accept assistance from automated, but that trust in such systems could be improved if researchers can develop systems that better accommodate users’ needs and preferences.
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In cases of online shopping, Alluqmani reported that a lack of description was challenging.
“In cases of online shopping, Alluqmani [43] reported that a lack of description was challenging; therefore, images of items must offer detailed and clear descriptions.”
From The accessibility of digital technologies for people with visual impairment and blindness: a scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as [43]
In such cases, users have to seek the help of sighted users.
“In such cases, users have to seek the help of sighted users (for more detailed examples see [43]).”
From The accessibility of digital technologies for people with visual impairment and blindness: a scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as [43]
A participant found an item description of 'Take this with you on your summer holiday' not to be comprehendible, as they could not imagine the meaning of it.
“For example, a participant found an item description of 'Take this with you on your summer holiday' [43] not to be comprehendible, as they could not imagine the meaning of it.”
From The accessibility of digital technologies for people with visual impairment and blindness: a scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as [43]
In online shopping, when sighted users look at images to understand details and make decisions, this is challenging for blind users because the descriptions provided are usually short and do not provide enough information regarding how they look.
“In online shopping when sighted users look at images to understand the details and make decisions, this is challenging for blind users because the descriptions provided are usually short and do not provide enough information regarding how they look.”
From The accessibility of digital technologies for people with visual impairment and blindness: a scoping review (2024) · cites this paper as [43]
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Alluqmani, A., Harvey, M. A., & Zhang, Z.
- Affiliations
- Umm al-Qura University (SA)
- University of Sheffield (GB)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2023-07-10
- Pages
- 753-764
- OpenAlex
- W4383679920
- Cited by
- 14
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 5.87
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Designing Interactive Systems Conference (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Occupational Therapy › Assistive Technology in Communication and Mobility
- Keywords
- visually impaired people, online clothing shopping, accessibility, barriers to online shopping, clothing description, search tools, customer reviews, user needs
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