Accessibility in Ecommerce Design: Making Your Store Inclusive for All

When was the last time you struggled to navigate a store and try to buy some products? For millions of people, it’s a daily experience – not because they are unfamiliar with tech, but because many stores aren’t compliant with the ecommerce accessibility standards. What are these standards, and how to make your ecommerce website more inclusive? This article has you covered. 

What is ecommerce website accessibility?

Ecommerce site accessibility means developing and designing your store so that everyone – including people with disabilities – can browse, shop, and checkout without obstacles. In practice, accessibility includes things like making texts clear and readable, adding descriptive alt texts for images, making sure your site works with just a keyboard, and writing error messages that actually help people fix the problem. 

Why ecommerce accessibility should be a priority

Accessibility is no longer optional; it’s a must to at least stay legally compliant. By meeting legal standards, such as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), you protect your ecommerce business from costly legal risks. Making your store inclusive is also a moral obligation since over 1 billion people worldwide live with some form of disability. On top of that, accessible websites have better rankings in search engines and strengthen business reputation and brand loyalty. 

Best practices for designing an accessible ecommerce store

What are the top accessibility practices every ecommerce site should follow?

• Enable keyboard navigation so that all interactive elements – menus, forms, buttons – are accessible without having to use a mouse.
• Structure content with headings and landmarks so that assistive technologies can interpret your layout correctly.
• Design for screen readers using ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) labels where needed and then test your site with readers like VoiceOver.
• Make the checkout process easy  – use clear instructions, large form fields, and avoid sudden layout changes that might confuse users.
• Add captions for videos and transcripts for audio content to support users with hearing impairments.
• Add descriptive alts for images, especially for product photos, to help people with visual impairments understand what’s being shown.
• Meet contrast ratio guidelines (minimum 4.5:1 for normal text) tokeep everything easy to read.
• Make clickable elements like links and buttons easy to tap, ensuring they’re big enough to tap on touch devices, which is especially important for users with motor impairments and older people.

Where to start implementing all these changes?

How to start making your store more accessible today

To implement all the best ecommerce website accessibility practices, you need in-house developers and designers with relevant expertise or a proven ecommerce website design agency.

What are the implementation steps?

1. To spot and fix obvious issues, run an accessibility audit. Use tools like WAVE, Axe DevTools, or Google Lighthouse to find unlabeled buttons, missing alt texts, or poor color contrast.
2. Fix detected issues, ensuring contrast and readability. Make sure your font sizes are legible on all devices, and all form fields are labeled.
3. If you use ecommerce platforms like Shopify or Woocommerce, ensure that your theme is accessibility-friendly. Also, avoid using plugins that break keyboard or screen reader functionality. 
4. Ensure that your store is easy to navigate with just a keyboard. Find out if you can access all pages, dropdowns, fields, and buttons. 
5. Test your store with a screen reader like VoiceOver, NVDA, or TalkBack to see if it’s accessible for people with visual impairments.
6. Start by fixing minor issues to improve your user experience, and proceed with long-term solutions to comply with all web accessibility ecommerce standards and guidelines.

During the improvement process, continue gathering user feedback and consulting with accessibility specialists to make sure you’re moving in the right direction. You should also train your team – designers, developers, and content creators to establish the entire team’s accessibility mindset.

Conclusions

Making your ecommerce site accessible isn’t just some legal thing you have to do. You need to take care of your customers and make sure everyone can use your store without any hassle.  From clearer product descriptions to easier checkouts and intuitive navigation, accessible designs benefit all users, improving your brand reputation and giving you a competitive edge. The best part is that you don’t have to make overall changes in your store following best accessibility practices. Instead, you can audit your website and improve it step-by-step for better inclusiveness.