Despite the indications that sales at the end of 2024 will reach volumes sufficient to be considered the highest in recent years in e-commerce, the fact is that there is still a great waste of potential in the sector, mainly regarding the low level of accessibility among the most used portals by Brazilians for online shopping
Just to give you an idea, a recent study conducted by Biomob assigned an average score of 6 on a scale of 0 to 10 for the main Brazilian marketplaces against the standards set by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1)
The indicator is considered a guide created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), to guide websites to comply with minimum standards of digital accessibility. In practice, brands like OLX, American. Magazine Luiza, Netshoes, Carrefour. Cold Point, Bahia Houses, Extra and Mercado Livre were in a range 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 adequate navigation for all audiences, but it is a fact that efforts were found being made in order to achieve this goal
On the other hand, it is a cause for concern that e-commerce sites are still not fully adapted to the best accessibility practices. This leads to a cycle of losses that affects everyone involved
Just to give you an idea, another recent survey conducted by PROCON-SP found that 69% of consumers with some type of physical disability have already faced barriers to making online purchases, with 17% stating that they always face difficulties and 52% sometimes
If this scenario has as direct victims the people who were frustrated for not being able to make the transactions they wanted, it is also true that the sites, portals and marketplaces end up having, by table, a significant loss by not generating revenue from these operations
Perhaps this waste of sales potential is being considered irrelevant for these companies, but in practice, who is able to guarantee the volume of revenue that does not enter the coffers of these companies? Is it smaller or larger than what they invest in marketing campaigns to try to attract customers while missing out on selling to a customer they have already won over
Fortunately, in some cases it seems that it won't be long before an acceptable level of accessibility is reached. It is the case, for example from OLX, that scored 9,7. The OLX website presented a total of 31 identified accessibility practices. Of these, 24 were classified as acceptable, 6 require additional manual verification and only one was considered unacceptable, being it of AA level
On the other hand, the most common score was also the lowest, which corresponds to 4,5 applied to Ponto Frio, Bahia Houses, Extra and to Mercado Livre. The Americanas Stores website achieved the second best result (7,5), followed closely 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 service in Libras and offering functions like Translator for Libras and assistive resources, these features were inactive during the survey, displaying error messages
Already in the evaluation of the portals with the best ranking, positive points were detected such as the fact that all images on the page have the necessary text alternative equivalent. Another positive aspect was that the elements with banner semantics were not contained within any elements with other semantics
Whatever it is, it seems obvious that deepening the accessibility conditions in this segment is notjustit's a matter of social responsibility, inclusion and empathy.It is also a strategy of significant impact on business
