Disabled people encounter many barriers while attempting to access the services on the web. E-commerce websites have been also intensively and widely used. The e-commerce market in Turkey will hit TL 400 billion by 2021. It also evaluates the accessibility of 10 popular Turkish e-commerce websites using five accessibility testing tools, namely Achecker, TAW, Eval Access, MAUVE, and FAE. This research has found that most accessibility guidelines are covered by A checker tool. Navigation, readability, input assistance, and timing are the common found accessibility problems while assessing the accessibility of the targeted websites.
TopIntroduction
An e-commerce website is the central way an e-retailer communicates with their online consumers. E-retailer seeks to provide positive online purchasing experiences for online consumers of all ages. A website design encourages or discourages a consumer’s online purchasing intentions (Cyr et al., 2015). In the context of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, website design features have different effects on forming consumers’ trust and distrust (Ou and Sia, 2010). In particular, B2C websites those are accessible content, information and easy to navigate influences consumer trust to buy online and must appeal to consumers (Cyr, 2013; Éthier et al., 2008). However, online shopping websites need to be accessible to all consumers of all ages, including those with disabilities. For-example, nowadays dynamic websites content (CSS—Cascading Style Sheets, Flash and JavaScript, etc.) are used in most of the e-commerce websites to provide a good visual presentation to attract or retain consumer.
Though, these dynamic webpages are inaccessible to disabled people, such as visual impaired person, since screen readers are not adept of handling it. Many researchers such as (King et al., 2004; Power and Jürgensen, 2010) have revealed dynamic contents using Flash animation, JavaScript, and graphic links etc. is a threat to web accessibility. The inability to shop online because of such interfaces increases web inaccessibility of e-commerce websites for people with disabilities. People with disabilities have limitations for going shopping, which put them at inconvenience because of their physical handicap. However, Internet has opened new possibilities of online shopping. In particular, disabled people can gain a sense of emotional stability by online shopping. However, if e-commerce websites are inaccessible, consumers with disabilities do not have the equal access they are guaranteed by law. Many online consumers may have various types of disabilities, such as sensory (hearing and vision), motor (limited use of hands) and cognitive (language and learning disabilities) impairments. An accessible web site can utilize all of assistive technologies such as screen readers, voice recognition, alternative pointing devices, alternate keyboards, and the website displays (Lazar et al., 2004). Even though these technologies can help people with disabilities, webpage navigation, conveying image and flash-based content are some of the serious issues for people with disabilities. Web accessibility is an important element in the design of e-commerce websites (Lazar and Sears, 2006; Sohaib and Kang, 2013). Therefore, there is a serious need of web accessibility in B2C e-commerce websites for user of all ages and in particular for people with disabilities such as sensory (hearing and vision), motor (limited use of hands) and cognitive (language and learning disabilities) impairments.
The combination of technology and people in human computer interaction is a vital part of modern society that enables a wide range of economic benefits. In particular, the emerging growth of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce allows everyone to put up his or her own business online, locally or globally. Lazar and Sears (2006), the authors discussed that web accessibility should receive attention in e-commerce websites. The B2C website provides the consumers with instant online access to products without physical barriers. In order to get the most out of revenue from online trade, businesses must focus on an accessible B2C e-commerce website, which should also give a real and convenient shopping experience for consumers of all ages. In particular, people with disabilities, such as color blindness.
Because of the Internet availability, online shops provide consumer the ease of buying and selling products. However, the required web technological infrastructure is either insufficient or does not exist in terms of web accessibility guidelines. For that reason, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) help to make the website accessible for users of all ages and with disabilities such as colour blindness, deaf users, and age related vision problems. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate Turkish B2C e-commerce website accessibility for consumers with disabilities in particular.