Tesco.com shames rivals on accessibility – and legal services

The Law Society's chief executive Janet Paraskeva welcomed the new service, which Tesco hopes will 'demystify' the law for the man on the street. Paraskeva's only qualification was that shoppers should seek expert legal advice for anything but the most simple of transactions.

The legal offerings include DIY information kits on residential lettings, wills, letters of complaint, divorce etc.

Meanwhile, computers and disability charity AbilityNet praised Tesco for its alternative web site www.tesco.com/access which it found to be the only site to meet the basic web accessibility needs of disabled users in a survey of the UK's five most prominent supermarkets.

Accessibility

According to AbilityNet, the Tesco alternative site is easily accessed by people with visual impairment, dyslexia or those with a physical disability making mouse use difficult. The site gains a four-star rating on AbilityNet's five-star scale.

None of the other sites pass even basic levels of accessibility and, as a consequence, are losing out on a massive market opportunity, and possibly breaching the UK's Disability Discrimination Act.

Somerfield and Tesco's mainstream sites both achieved a two star rating, while Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Asda could only manage one star.

The results are broadly in line with findings from earlier AbilityNet surveys into web sites operated by leading airlines, newspapers and banks - industry sectors that, like supermarkets, have generally led the move into e-business and on-line operation but all of which failed basic accessibility tests.

According to Robin Christopherson, AbilityNet's Web Consultancy Manager, himself blind:

"Recently published research by The Disability Rights Commission shows that able-bodied visitors also benefit from accessible web sites, finding information easier and quicker to locate by some 35 %, so the commercial argument is overwhelming. When we order our groceries on-line we are seeking critical functionality not a life-changing experience. Accessible sites are simply easier to use: they improve productivity for everyone."

Problems

Typical problems encountered by Christopherson and his team included the hard-coding of the text size on most sites. This makes the text difficult to enlarge – a facility that is vital for many visitors with a vision impairment.

AbilityNet found that the text labels attached to images upon which blind visitors and text browser users rely for an explanation, were often uninformative or completely absent. Without these spoken labels on graphical links, navigation for a blind visitor is pure guesswork.

The survey also found overuse of pictures of text instead of actual text. This not only means that the user cannot modify font size or colour contrast – essential for those with a vision impairment or dyslexia – it also prevents screen reader users from reading the content when so often these images also do not carry tool tips (ALT tags).

Other drawbacks common to several of the sites tested include the reliance on JavaScript – small programs that are built into a page and often not recognised (and therefore rendered unreadable) by many older browsers, or some specialist browsers used by those with vision impairment. As a result, says AbilityNet, the crucial 'shopping basket' process was disabled – and in one case access to the entire site was denied.

One site embedded important content in a Flash movie interactive presentation – which cannot be accessed by those visitors who cannot use a mouse, are vision-impaired, or use speech output or voice recognition software.

With a potential market of 1.6 million registered blind users, 1.5 million people with cognitive difficulties and a further 3.4 million with disabilities preventing them from using the standard keyboard, screen and mouse set-up with ease, e-businesses are losing out on some £50 - £60 billion per year buying power by not having fully accessible web sites, says AbilityNet.

"The business case for accessible shopping on-line is a powerful one, so it's now up to our major retailers to walk the talk. The vision of an inclusive 'e-society' depends on web site accessibility for everyone, whatever their disability or the technology they employ," said Shuna Kennedy, AbilityNet's chief executive.

"The internet has changed the way we access goods and information beyond recognition. To create a web site which disabled people can use isn't only a matter of commercial logic and moral duty; like other suppliers of goods and services, web sites must now comply with equal access laws under the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act," she added.

But Tesco.com should also consider whether it should have an alternative site at all. The alternative is to have a single site that is accessible to all. This is preferable, says Trenton Moss of web usability and accessibility specialists Webcredible, because alternative sites not only duplicate the work involved in running a site, they also add to the feeling of marginalisation that many disabled people already feel within society.

Trenton Moss told OUT-LAW.COM:

"Any organisation making the effort to 'accessify' their web site is always welcome and should be commended. However, Tesco has really missed the point of web accessibility here. Web accessibility is about creating an inclusive-for-all internet, not dividing us into disabled and non-disabled users.

"Web accessibility isn't rocket science and doesn't have to be taken to the extreme lengths it's been taken to here. Implementing accessibility in to a web site is often just a case of a bit of tweaking here and there. You certainly don't need to make a whole new web site."

Trenton Moss on alternative web sites (looking at Manchester United's accessible site).