Despite indications that sales at the end of 2024 may reach volumes sufficient to be considered the highest in recent years for e-commerce, the fact remains that there is still significant wasted potential in the sector, particularly regarding the low level of accessibility among the most used portals by Brazilians for online shopping.
To give an idea, a recent study conducted by Biomob assigned an average score of 6 on a scale of 0 to 10 to the main Brazilian marketplaces based on the standards established by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1).
This indicator is considered a guide created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to help websites comply with minimum digital accessibility standards. In practice, brands such as OLX, Americanas, Magazine Luiza, Netshoes, Carrefour, Ponto Frio, Casas Bahia, Extra, and Mercado Livre scored between 4.5 and 9.7.
On the one hand, the good news is that despite being at different levels of execution, all marketplaces showed concern for ensuring accessibility in their shopping environments. Some errors still hinder adequate navigation for all audiences, but efforts were found to achieve this goal.
On the other hand, it is concerning that e-commerce sites are still not fully adapted to the best accessibility practices. This results in a cycle of losses that affects everyone involved.
To give an idea, another recent survey by PROCON-SP found that 69% of consumers with some type of physical disability have faced barriers when shopping online, with 17% stating they always encounter difficulties and 52% sometimes.
While the direct victims of this scenario are people frustrated by not being able to complete transactions they wanted, it is also true that websites, portals, and marketplaces suffer significant losses by missing out on revenue from these operations.
Perhaps this wasted sales potential is considered irrelevant by these companies, but in practice, who can guarantee the revenue that fails to enter their coffers? Is it less or more than what they invest in marketing campaigns to attract new customers while failing to sell to an already acquired customer?
Fortunately, in some cases, it seems that not much is needed to reach an acceptable level of accessibility. For example, OLX 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 at level AA.
On the other hand, the most common score was also the lowest, corresponding to 4.5, assigned to Ponto Frio, Casas Bahia, Extra, and Mercado Livre. Lojas Americanas had the second-best result (7.5), closely followed by Magazine Luiza (7.0), Netshoes (6.7), and finally Carrefour (5.4).
Among the portals with the lowest scores, issues were detected, such as having a dedicated tab for Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) support and offering functions like Libras Translator and assistive features, but these functionalities were inactive during the survey, displaying error messages.
In the evaluation of the highest-ranked portals, positive aspects were detected, such as all page images having the necessary alternative text equivalents. Another positive aspect was that elements with banner semantics were not contained within any elements with other semantics.
In any case, it seems obvious that deepening accessibility conditions in this sector is not ‘just‘ a matter of social responsibility, inclusion, and empathy. It is also a strategy with significant business impact.
