The retail sector in Brazil is wasting an important consumer slice by not raising the levels of accessibility, at least among the most used portals for shopping through the Internet. The finding is from a study by the Bimob Institute, specialized in accessibility solutions and consulting for social projects of inclusion, diversity and equity.
The entity evaluated the condition of the main Brazilian marketplaces against the standards established by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1), a guide created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), to guide the sites to be in accordance with minimum standards of digital accessibility. The result was an average of 6 with the brands being in a range between 4.5 and 9.7.
The research evaluated the portals Magazine Luiza, OLX, Netshoes (Carrefour, Ponto Frio, Casas Bahia, Extra, Americanas and Mercado Livre. Among them, the highest level of accessibility was presented by OLX, which was 9.7. According to the study, the OLX site 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 not acceptable, being level AA.
On the other hand, the most frequently found score was also the lowest, corresponding to 4.5 applied to Ponto Frio, Casas Bahia, Extra and Mercado Livre.The Lojas Americanas website had the second best result (7.5), followed closely by Magazine Luiza (7.0), Netshoes (6.7) and finally Carrefour (5.4).
| Marketplace | Score |
| OLX | 9.7 |
| American | 7.5 |
| Luiza Magazine | 7.0 |
| Netshoes | 6.7 |
| Carrefour | 5.4 |
| Cold Point | 4.5 |
| Bahia Houses | 4.5 |
| Extra | 4.5 |
| Mercado Livre | 4.5 |
According to the COO of Biomob, Valmir de Souza, the best news presented by the study was the finding 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 navigability for all audiences, but it is a fact that we find efforts being made to achieve this GOAL”, he says.
Among the portals that received the lowest scores, the expert points out problems such as the fact that despite having a tab dedicated to the service in Libras and offering functions such as Translator for Libras and assistive resources, these features were inactive during the search, displaying error messages. On the other hand, even among these sites with lower scores, it was possible to verify that they all follow good accessibility practices in relation to the use of tabbed navigation, alternative texts and programming patterns.
In the evaluation of the portals with better ranking, positive points were detected, such as the fact that all images on the page have the necessary alternative equivalent in text. Another positive aspect was the exposure of elements with banner semantics not being contained within any element with other semantics.
For the COO of Biomob, the fact that ecommerce sites are not yet fully adapted to the best accessibility practices entails a cycle of losses that reaches all involved. He cites numbers like those of a recent research conducted by PROCON-SP. The agency detected that 69% of consumers with some type of physical disability have already faced barriers to make virtual purchases, with 17% stating that they always face difficulties and 52% sometimes. “These people were frustrated by not being able to make the transactions they would like, but the websites, portals and marketplaces also stopped billing with these operations.What will be the size of the loss for these companies if this relationship is confirmed in a mega promotion like Black Friday” concludes?
