Despite indications that end-of-2024 sales may reach volumes high enough to be considered the most substantial in recent years in e-commerce, the fact remains that there is still a significant waste of potential in the sector, especially regarding the low level of accessibility among the most used portals by Brazilians for online shopping.
Just to give an idea, a recent study conducted by Biomob gave an average score of 6 on a scale of 0 to 10 for the main Brazilian marketplaces compared to the standards established by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1).
The indicator is a guide created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to guide websites to meet minimum standards of digital accessibility. In practice, brands like OLX, Americanas, Magazine Luiza, Netshoes, Carrefour, Ponto Frio, Casas Bahia, Extra, and Mercado Livre scored between 4.5 and 9.7.
On one hand, the good news is that despite being at different levels of execution, it was possible to find in all marketplaces the concern to ensure accessibility in their shopping environments. Some errors still prevent proper navigability for all audiences, but it is a fact that efforts are being made to achieve this goal.
On the other hand, it is worrisome that e-commerce sites are still not fully adapted to the best practices of accessibility. This leads to a cycle of losses that affects everyone involved.
Just to give an idea, another recent survey conducted by PROCON-SP found that 69% of consumers with some form of physical disability have faced barriers to making online purchases, with 17% stating they always face difficulties and 52% sometimes.
If this scenario has as direct victims people who are frustrated because they cannot make the transactions they would like, it is also true that the sites, portals, and marketplaces end up suffering, by extension, a great loss by failing to generate income from these operations.
Perhaps this waste of sales potential is being considered irrelevant by these companies, but in practice, who can ensure the volume of revenue that does not enter the coffers of these companies? Is it less or more than what they invest in marketing campaigns to try to attract customers while missing out on selling to a customer who has already been won over?
Fortunately, in some cases, it seems that it doesn’t take much to achieve an acceptable level of accessibility. This is the case, for example, with OLX, which scored 9.7. The OLX website had a total of 31 accessibility practices identified. Of these, 24 were classified as acceptable, 6 require additional manual verification, and only one was considered not acceptable, being at AA level.
On the other hand, the most common score was also the lowest, which corresponds to 4.5 applied to Ponto Frio, Casas Bahia, Extra, and Mercado Livre. The Americanas website got the second-best result (7.5), closely followed by Magazine Luiza (7.0), Netshoes (6.7), and finally Carrefour (5.4).
Among the portals that received the lowest scores, problems were detected, such as the fact that despite having a dedicated tab for customer service in Libras and offering functions like Libras Translator and assistive resources, these features were inactive during the survey, displaying error messages.
When evaluating portals with higher rankings, positive points were identified such as all page images having the necessary alternative equivalent in text. Another positive aspect was that elements with the banner semantics were not contained within any elements with other semantics.
However, it seems obvious that deepening accessibility conditions in this segment is not ‘just’ a matter of social responsibility, inclusion, and empathy. It’s also a strategy with a significant impact on business.
