If you’re a retailer, this year might be your last chance to take advantage of your online and mobile channels. If you don’t, you’re going to miss out.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that a record number of Australians did their Christmas shopping online last year. More Australians chose online to discover interesting products, conduct research, avoid crowds, and save both time and money.
The recent Australian census created an accessible version of the online form, which, although very effective, raises questions about how we include people with disabilities in democracies.
Stephen Cheshire has already shared his thoughts about why many people did not complete the 2011 e-census. I decided to submit my own household’s census using the accessible version to discover what was different from the standard version and test a few pages against the WCAG 2.0 for compliance. I didn’t want to perform a full accessibility review, but I was curious about the differences between the main version. Kathryn Ross also completed the census using a screen reader, which is a common tool for people with visual impairments to read websites. Her observations are in here too.
I don’t intend to describe the details of an accessibility review, nor the technical hoops that a website needs to jump through in order to be accessible. Instead I want to point out a few easy improvements the e-census creators could have considered to make the experience an even better one.