Accessibility concerns are rising across eCommerce projects as new lawsuits seem to target any site with a perceived weakness.

The latest standard seems to be WCAG 2.1 level AA as the baseline these firms are aiming the client towards.

I ran this poll to take a pulse and see where people are landing on this important question.

Some of the respondents also shared their thoughts on the matter:

Michael Begg said it’s “Interesting to see compliance issues that used to challenge traditional retail now coming online.” Totally. The accommodations are different than brick-and-mortar, of course, but we still have to be mindful of making commerce accessible to all.

Bill Kaufmann shared from his experience, saying “I’ve been on several Ecomm projects the last few years to resolve these issues. In each case the company had settled out of court for big bucks to avoid negative publicity. And then spent even more bucks to re-do their Ecomm systems.”

James Millett advised: “Engage users with diverse needs early in a collaborative way - in previous companies this improved overall UX and meant you always had friendly faces to ask for support on the more complex judgement calls.”

Suresh Chaganti noted that “ADA compliance is typically not the thing on project plan, unless people have awareness on this - which is typically missing in small, medium sized businesses.” Unfortunately, this is true. More companies need to start thinking like Andy Feierfeil, who said “Never treat accessibility anything less than a critical top business/consumer priority.” Wise words!