Web Accessibility of the Cyprus Island Food Retailers' Websites

Abstract

Accessibility is the process of making information and electronic communication environments meaningful and usable for most people including those with disabilities. It is not always an easy task to provide all user communities with different areas of interests and needs with exact styles and contents. It is a good practice to employ responsible designs and a certain degree of interaction that provide equitable conditions to suit the needs of the most user communities. It became evident that in the passed two years the world went thru a terrifying Coronavirus disease which made the accessibility of web sites of retailers even more challenging. Most of the food supplying companies introduced shop-to door deliveries of food products with web based applications. Although, technically speaking, these web sites accomplished the task for most of the people but with some accessibility issues. These issues can be identified and solved by following the international standards to gain world wide acceptance. This study covers the investigation of the accessibility of the Food Retailers' websites in the whole of Cyprus Island. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is followed in the process. Three testing software are used to determine the degree of compliance of the food retailers with the WCAG 2.1 in Cyprus Island. The aim of this study is to raise awareness about web accessibility among general public. The findings are not so promising and the sites examined are not in compliance with the standard of the guidelines defined in WCAG.