Website Accessibility – a potential Revenue generator
The power of the web has always enthralled me. It truly has changed our lives in so many multiple ways. My consulting assignments on retail and ecommerce have taken me through various personas that have been created and reached out to by most of the web companies. But at times I have wondered how much of an effect would the web world have on a differently abled person. Has ecommerce companies of the world thought of a differently-abled persona? A population size to the tune of almost 10% (650 million) of the world’s total population and a great potential for revenue generation? Has the power of the web changed their world too?
During an impending client visit at Bangalore, I was in discussion with Dr. Jai Ganesh and Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar (from Infosys) on the potential demos that we can organize. And by pure co-incidence, I came across the in-house developed web accessibility tool called iProwe. And all the answers that I was looking for seemed to be addressed by this one tool.
According to the United Nations Global Audit for Web Accessibility, almost 97% of the world wide web do not meet the prescribed accessibility requirements for differently abled users. This means a person who is visually challenged and cannot read images, the hearing impaired who cannot listen to audio, users with colour blindness, users with motor disabily thus impairing their use of a mouse or keyboard, users with cognitive disabilities and elderly people who cannot read small fonts cannot access the websites that you and me frequent every day. As a result, this potential revenue pool has never been tapped.
A web accessibility tool like iProwe help companies make their websites friendlier for the differently abled. And this can have multiple ramifications. But even before we go into the commercials of making websites accessible, let us understand why even a ecommerce company would think of implementing this when their sales revenue on a QoQ and a YoY have always been showing growth (Maybe not during a downturn though). Most developed nations have legislations and regulations in place which necessitates websites to be accessible for the differently abled. To quote a few, in the US, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments, 1998 allows federal employees with disabilities to file complaints if they are not accommodated. The British Standards Institution (BSI) Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 78 is applicable for all organizations and is intended for use by those commissioning or maintaining public facing websites and web based services. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has laid down clear guidelines specifying accessibility of websites. This along with many other nations like Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Netherlands and other in the European Union have set guidelines for enabling the web for the differently abled.
Now coming to the economics which will be of interest for every web company. Apart from being a newer segment which would mean higher revenue, more so in a downturn when you wish your sales figures would keep moving northwards, an accessible website can significantly reduce the marketing cost of reaching out to the differently abled – to the tune of 12-35%. In addition to that, accessible web pages take upto 75% lesser time to load. It also shows a significant increase in the natural search engine traffic.
The patent pending iProwe automatically analyses the accessibility issues of websites and recommends remedial measures. It combines multi level scanning allowing the tool to scan multiple level of websites against a set of intelligent rules and recommendations derived from several accessibility guidelines and accessibility design best practices and generates ready to use reports in convenient forms. The tool’s intelligent crawling engine has an advanced algorithm based on a variety of disability profiles and meets the WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards. The tool also uses a rich repository of design best practices for website accessibility taken from across industries like retail, financial services, insurance which gives it the edge over its nearest competitors in the market.
This has indeed been an amazing revelation. I am sure in my next ecommerce engagement, I can confidently suggest the client an additional persona which will open up an entirely newer segment of target consumers for them.
The choice is clear. The benefits are clearer. Web companies can wait for legislations to be enforced or proactively owns social responsibility and open up their doors for the differently abled.
Notable links :
(i) Infosys iProwe : http://www.infosys.com/iprowe/default.asp
(ii) Section 508 of Rehabilitation Act :
http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=14
(iii) British Standards Institution PAS :
http://www.bsigroup.com/en/About-BSI/News-Room/BSI-News-Content/Sectors/ICT-- Telecommunications/News-Content5/
Comments
Hey Raj!
Amazing article. I just loved it. In fact your writing skills. You have captured the intent really well. Though we always know about this segment people but tend to just avoid thinking about this sector or atleast Indian ecommerce world so far has kept this idea in back pocket. Let me know if any of your client soon buys your idea!
Posted by: Prerna Jain | October 27, 2009 12:36 PM
Hi Rrituraj,
I have n’t heard of anything more unique and innovative from the time I have been in this industry. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and enlightening us. It will be interesting to understand how iProwe addresses the issue of web accessibility for the differently abled. Since I haven’t seen the demo, I would not be able to comment on that. But definitely a couple of points come to my mind. One – if most of the developed nations have legislations and regulations in place that necessitate websites to be accessible for the differently abled, then why is it that almost 97% of the world wide web still do not meet the prescribed accessibility requirements? Secondly, apart from their social responsibility, would it really make a business case for web companies to make their websites accessible? Rather than looking at the total universe (10% of the world’s population that is differently abled), should we not be looking at the level of web penetration across the world. Will the benefits of investing in web accessibility outweigh the costs involved? Probably, it may. But, what holds true for one industry may not be as good for another.
Posted by: Sudeep Kumar Mandhania | October 29, 2009 04:08 PM
Thank you Prerna. You are right, its high time such legislations are also enforced on ecommerce websites in the developing nations. In fact, 2 major retailer of the UK have already implemented iProwe in their ecom sites.
Posted by: Rrituraj Sharma | November 3, 2009 01:02 AM
Sudeep, thank you for your valuable thoughts. The way iProwe works is amazing. It can identify errors in record time and generates reports identifying all the errors.
Legislations and regulations are not strictly enforced and hence that figure of 97%.
The online commerce as an industry has matured in developed nations. It absolutely makes a strong business case for companies as they would be targeting a new segment of the population. And using iProwe gives an added advantage of reducing the cost of identiying errors and rectifying them as compared to a manual process. Apart from that, I have also listed a couple of pertinent points in my post highlighting the increased revenue flow for the online commerce companies.
Posted by: Rrituraj Sharma | November 3, 2009 01:03 AM
Hi Rrithu,
Its a wonderful article about a wonderful product. You are thinking about the differently-abled, who are the most vulnerable and ignored % of the society ..I think you should also make the differently-abled also informed about the product..There can be a launch on disabled day (Unfortunately it was during last month) and so on. But there is a lot of fraud which is alarmingly growing on online transactions and trading..the disabled should be equipped to tide over that also....
RRithu is one of the Best Talent from MANAGE and I am so proud of you about your logical skills and writing skills
Posted by: Arun.T.T | December 10, 2009 04:38 AM
An area oft non focused in regard to the relevance of web accessibility is insurance. Insurance institutions and e commerce for them account for a very large chunk of global financials, and thus fuelling the accesibility requirements for a population who need special access considerations.
Insurance organizations globally have not shown very much focus in this area, and it would do good for them to 'start' doing so, else face the penalties as well as a loss of customer base. No doubt many insurers have shown interest and tried ensuring compliance with regulations on this, but larger numbers are yet to even understand this.
Good of you Rrituraj to bring up this area.
Posted by: Partha Sarathi Panda | December 11, 2009 09:27 AM