Supermarkets and Web Accessibility [Sector Snapshot]

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Accessibility

Online grocery shopping has become a preoccupation for many of us, and has boomed as we’ve spent time in lockdown. But are supermarket websites accessible to everyone? We took a look at the Big Five UK supermarkets. By Margaret Cooney and Pilao Lab’s accessibility team.

It seemed calmer in my local Sainsbury’s at the start of November – just before the second lockdown in England – with plentiful supplies of pasta and toilet paper this time around.

It could be the calm before the storm though as, on top of the latest lockdown, we’re entering what is traditionally the busiest shopping time of the year – and a recent campaign launched by the British Retail Consortium is urging shoppers to buy early or miss out.

Sensible advice, perhaps. But, with the vast majority of the UK locked down until early December, there is likely to be a huge surge in online shopping, particularly for food and household goods. The IMRG, the industry body for online retailers, is warning of excessively high volumes and huge surges in demand.

For those online shoppers with disabilities, this isn’t good news. The Purple Tuesday Change Programme, launched on November 3rd, produced evidence that suggests the last lockdown turned back the clock for disabled shoppers. And The Grocer Magazine also drew attention to a less well-publicised effect of the pandemic, which was the impact of social distancing measures, new store layouts and the growth of online shopping on disabled customers.

Supermarkets have made a huge effort to improve their online services, but a lot of their focus has been directed towards creating additional capacity for delivery slots and offering the best value deals.

The Purple research showed there is much more to be done to make the online customer experience more accessible – and that disabled shoppers were excluded from many websites and apps because of their inaccessibility. A staggering 98% of retail home pages they surveyed had accessibility failures.

Gary McFarlane, the Pilao Labs accessibility specialist, recently blogged about the problems using government websites if you’re disabled, but the Purple research highlighted multiple failings with retail websites that included (but is not restricted to):

• absence of a site map for the website

• inaccessible menus and dropdowns for keyboard users

• inadequate product information

• unable to use a mobile website.

Mike Adams, the founder of Purple, also pointed to the fact that retailers were missing out on the vast consumer spending power of disabled customers, who comprise 22% of the population. The ‘Purple Pound’ is estimated to be worth around £274bn to retailers.

Our previous sector snapshot about publishing and web accessibility made it clear why accessibility matters for any business, not just from a moral or legal perspective, but also commercially. An accessible website is open for business! Improving the accessibility of digital services is not only moral and legal – it’s a commercial win too, given the large number of potential extra customers.

This highlights the stark fact that there’s still a long way to go towards achieving accessible services – and it’s more important than ever. With the massive shift towards online food shopping and one in four Brits saying they buy their food essentials online at least once a week, according to findings based on Waitrose’s own online sales and a poll of 2000 adults who shop across a range of retailers, the trend towards online is unlikely to reverse.

This month seems the ideal time to turn our attention to supermarkets for our second sector snapshot. It sees not only the Purple Tuesday launch and a second lockdown, just before the onset of the festive period; it’s also the 25th anniversary of the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), a defining moment in the struggle for disability rights and equalities.

It’s also the perfect time for supermarket retailers to push web accessibility up their agenda. With that in mind, we selected the top five online supermarket retailers by visitor numbers to review and see how they performed. We also tested Ocado, who recently teamed up with M&S, because it was the pioneer for online food deliveries.

Our testing was on the homepages of the five UK online food supermarkets listed above, plus Ocado, using a combination of automated and manual tests. This included, Rocket Validator (Axe-core), Google Lighthouse, Dynomapper and Wave, using the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. Tests run from 1-5 November 2020.

They are snapshots, and we’re aware that things may change over time. It’s worth noting that all of the six we reviewed, Tesco.com, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons.com and Ocado have all published web accessibility statements; and although Sainsbury’s statement was last updated in 2011, it is the Official Partner of the Purple campaign. Asda.com has made its commitment to Purple Tuesday clear, but that seemed to be more about efforts it’s making in its stores. Aldi.co.uk didn’t seem to have a published web accessibility statement, but it is participating in Purple Tuesday.

Top 5 UK Supermarkets and Website Accessibility Table

The table below gives the results and shows that, of the top five, Tesco.com topped the rankings. Surprisingly, Ocado, the online supermarket shopping trailblazers, came out last.

Scroll down to see the result in an accessible table

It’s very encouraging to see the online supermarket sector doing so much to make its commitment to accessible web services so explicit. There were no critical issues with any of the websites we reviewed.

It’s also good to see that several are involved with Purple Tuesday. However, the pandemic has changed the food retail landscape forever, so even the most forward-thinking online food retailers, who make their commitment to accessibility explicit, should take this to another level and use this shift in consumer behaviour as an opportunity to overhaul their digital shopfronts.

If the six supermarkets we surveyed look over their shoulders, they will see Amazon together with Deliveroo, hot on their heels, as the battle for dominance in the online food retailing and delivery space heats up. Waitrose and Deliveroo have already teamed up, fuelling speculation about a deal with Amazon. The competition between online supermarkets and increased consumer demand will no doubt drive innovation in the online retail space.

Their top priority, however, should be to make the necessary adjustments to their online channels, so that disabled customers are able to shop online just as easily as anyone else.

Twenty five years after the passing of the DDA, it should be obvious to any business that not only are there strong commercial imperatives for doing so, but legal, social and moral imperatives too.

About the research

We used a combination of automated and manual testing methods. Automated accessibility tests are an inexpensive way to catch many easily-preventable errors such as basic coding errors, which can produce quick wins. For example, one tweak to a template may fix multiple pages across a site.

The automated tools we used included Google Lighthouse, Dynomapper, Wave and Rocket Validator and Deque’s Axe-core.

Human-centred manual testing is more time-consuming yet also more valuable, as it involves human judgment – something that can’t be replaced with technology. It involves looking at websites on different devices and browsers, and picks up on User Experience (UX) areas that automated tools are currently incapable of understanding.

Our assessment included testing the following:

1. ARIA (Assistive Rich Internet Applications) - www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/aria/

2. Contrast - www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/contrast-minimum

3. Navigation and keyboard accessibility - www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#consistent-navigation

4. Names and labels - www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/label-in-name

5. Tables and lists - www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/tables/

These five areas are key aspects of web accessibility, and together give a good indication of how accessible a website is overall.

Our ranking score is based on the average number of critical, serious, moderate and low issues found per page. Examples of these issues are as follows:

• Critical: Buttons must have discernible text; form elements must have names and labels; images must have alternate text.

• Serious: <li> elements must be contained in a <ul> or <ol>; form elements should have a visible label; elements must have sufficient colour contrast.

• Moderate: Heading levels should only increase by one; the skip-link target should exist and be focusable.

• Low: id attribute value must be unique.

About Sector Snapshots

Our ‘Sector Snapshots’ are exactly that – a look at particular sectors at a moment in time. These results may change over time (and hopefully improve!), as websites change and develop.

We’ll be testing the corporate websites of five leading organisations in different sectors in the coming months, and producing a series of ‘Sector Snapshots’ testing the performance of these websites against basic accessibility criteria. We will also do the same for search engine optimisation (SEO) – and revisit each Sector Snapshot periodically to assess changes and improvements over time.

Top 6 UK Supermarkets and Website Accessibility Table

WCAG 2.1 AA issues */page

	Tesco	Sainsbury's	Asda	Morrisons	Aldi	Ocado
ARIA	Failed	Failed	Passed	Failed	Failed	Failed
Contrast	Passed	Failed	Failed	Failed	Failed	Failed
Navigation	Passed	Passed	Failed	Failed	Failed	Failed
Names & Labels	Failed	Failed	Failed	Failed	Failed	Failed
Tables & Lists	Passed	Passed	Passed	Passed	Passed	Passed
Issues Found*
Serious	8	12	17	20	19	27
Moderate	2	1	1	0	4	1
Low	2	1	1	2	1	0
Ranking
Rank	1	2	3	4	5	6

Methodology

Pilao Labs tested the homepages from the top 6 UK supermarket websites using a combination of automated and manual tests including Rocket Validator (Axe-core), Google Lighthouse, Dynomapper and Wave, using the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. Tests run from 1-5 November 2020.

About Pilao Labs

Pilao Labs specialises in online accessibility and optimization. We believe that every organisation with a digital presence should provide the best possible user experience. By removing the barriers in digital technology, you will better understand your audiences and improve your accessibility compliance.

Get in touch to see how we can help you with a detailed accessibility audit of your websites, with detailed results and practical guidance for improving your accessibility compliance.

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