Accessibility challenges of e-commerce websites
Open accessAbstract
Today, there are many e-commerce websites, but not all of them are accessible. Accessibility is a crucial element that can make a difference and determine the success or failure of a digital business. The study was applied to 50 e-commerce sites in the top rankings according to the classification proposed by ecommerceDB. In evaluating the web accessibility of e-commerce sites, we applied an automatic review method based on a modification of Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) 1.0. To evaluate accessibility, we used Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) with the extension for Google Chrome, which helps verify password-protected, locally stored, or highly dynamic pages. The study found that the correlation between the ranking of e-commerce websites and accessibility barriers is 0.329, indicating that the correlation is low positive according to Spearman's Rho. According to the WAVE analysis, the research results reveal that the top 10 most accessible websites are Sainsbury's Supermarkets, Walmart, Target Corporation, Macy's, IKEA, H&M Hennes, Chewy, Kroger, QVC, and Nike. The most significant number of accessibility barriers relate to contrast errors that must be corrected for e-commerce websites to reach an acceptable level of accessibility. The most neglected accessibility principle is perceivable, representing 83.1%, followed by operable with 13.7%, in third place is robust with 1.7% and finally understandable with 1.5%. Future work suggests constructing a software tool that includes artificial intelligence algorithms that help the software identify accessibility barriers.
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E-commerce is a particularly relevant context for teaching digital accessibility, as many design and development students will likely work on web-based platforms such as online shops.
“E-commerce is a particularly relevant context for teaching digital accessibility, as many design and development students will likely work on web-based platforms such as online shops [2, 7].”
From Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (2025) · cites this paper as [2]
The Introduction (page unavailable) says e-commerce websites have grown considerably and that applying accessibility guidelines to them is essential, supporting their relevance as an accessibility context. The paper does not address teaching digital accessibility or whether design and development students are likely to work on online shops. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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- Authors
- Acosta-Vargas, P., Salvador-Acosta, B., Salvador-Ullauri, L., & Jadán-Guerrero, J.
- Affiliations
- Universidad de Las Américas (EC)
- University of Alicante (ES)
- Universidad Indoamérica (EC)
- Corresponding author
- Acosta-Vargas, Patricia
- Venue
- PeerJ Computer Science
- Publisher
- PeerJ
- Published
- 2022-02-22
- Volume
- 8
- Pages
- e891
- ISSN
- 2376-5992 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9044289
- OpenAlex
- W4212921141
- Cited by
- 32
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 15.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PeerJ Computer Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Greater South Information System
- Funders
- Universidad de Las Américas-Ecuador (INI.PAV.20.01)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Mobile and Web Applications
- Keywords
- web accessibility, e-commerce platforms, WAVE tool, automatic accessibility evaluation, website ranking, access barriers
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