A Framework to Support E-Commerce Development for People with Visual Impairment

The World Wide Web Consortium provides software developers with guidelines for designing accessible, cross browser compatible websites. Currently however, there are no guidelines in this area specific to the features of an e-commerce website. This paper explores the current usability issues relevant to users with visual impairment and further proposes a framework that seeks to ensure the site is suitable for visually impaired users. This paper includes data analysis which compares current issues in web technologies suitable for e-commerce and proposes system adaptations which can be conducted to portray the improvements in overall user experience. To this extent, several validation tools and testing techniques have been used to identify the usability issues that visually impaired users currently face when shopping online.