RE: wanted: ecommerce examples

Yes, there is maybe two separate case studies to look at like this;

1) Sites that are designed properly from the ground up to meet the full
potential of universal accessibility.
2) Sites that try to address accessibility and web standards through a
retrofit engineering approach.

I'd put Amazon in the second category.  I think both cases studies are
interesting.

Actually, I feel where there is some interesting work in this area is in the
online banking sector.  Some banks have got such a strong backlash from
customers because of inaccessible sites that they have really gone back to
the drawing board to take a more universal approach.  It has proved too
costly for them in customer dissatisfaction to do otherwise.  I know one of
my banks finally moved to remove almost all images and just provide
HTML/CSS/DOM based interface.  It was a big improvement.  I don't know how
accessible it is, haven't really looked, but I did send them an email
congratulating them on the improvement and strategy.

Geoff
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles McCathieNevile

Amazon has a version of their site that was apparently meant to be more
useful from small portable devices - http://www.amazon.com/access -
which was discussed on this list a while ago.

It doesn't conform to anything as "advanced", as WCAG double-A. Despite
meeting a couple of important priority 3 checkponts it misses some
priority 2's and at least one p1, based on a 3-minute "quick check".
But by stripping the site down to its bare essentials it is a huge
improvement for a number of users.

cheers

Chaals

On Friday, Oct 17, 2003, at 10:33 Europe/Zurich, Geoff Deering wrote:

> I would expect that Shelley is looking for examples where the
> accessibility component has been addresses as a primary concern in the
> design.
>
> Geoff

Received on Friday, 17 October 2003 07:18:16 UTC