Every little helps?
If you shop at Tesco, you’ll know that “every little helps”. If you’re one of their blind or partially sighted online customers though, you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. As Tesco close their access site and move people over to their new primary website, there are growing concerns about how accessibility has been factored into the user experience.
So what’s going on?
Tesco Access was developed with help from the RNIB, and launched back in 2001. It became the first website to carry the RNIB’s See It Right award and was seen as a positive step for web accessibility.
That said, at the time the idea of a separate website for people with disabilities was viewed with caution, something I’ve written about before. I must admit my opinion hasn’t changed substantially since then. Tesco Access was a good example of why the idea of a separate site is flawed, because it lacked many of the features available on the main website such as eCoupons.
Despite the lack of functionality compared to the main site, Tesco Access proved to be fairly popular. Blind and partially sighted people welcomed the improved accessibility, and people who preferred a quicker shopping experience also started to use it.
Back to the present, and Tesco has decided to do away with the access site and provide everyone with a unified website. It’s an idea that’s got a lot of merit. It makes sense for Tesco commercially because it slashes the cost of running two websites. It should also be good for Tesco’s customers with disabilities, because it should gives them access to the full range of previously unavailable features.
So what’s got everyone so worked up?
It seems that the new Tesco website is extremely awkward for blind and partially sighted people to use. A recent thread on the BCAB discussion list is typical of the frustrations people are feeling.
So is there anything to the problems people are reporting?
The best way to decide is to take a fairly standard task and do a quick screen reader comparison. It doesn’t make much difference in this case, but for those who like to know such things, I used Jaws v11 and Firefox 3.6. The task was to search for a product and add it to my basket (assuming you’re already logged into your account).
On the Tesco Access site these are the steps I would have taken:
- Type a product name into the search box and submit the search.
- On the results page, use the table quick nav key (t) to move to the product list table.
- Use a table navigation command (Control + Alt + down arrow) to move through the column of product titles.
- On finding the right product, move to the quantity field, add a number and press Enter to add to basket.
On the new Tesco site these are the steps I’ve just taken:
- Type a product name into the search box and submit the search.
- On the results page, use the heading quick nav key (h) to move to the primary heading on the page.
- Use the 2nd level heading quick nav key (2) to move to the product filter heading.
- Use the 2nd level heading quick nav key to move to the product pagination heading.
- Use the 2nd level heading quick nav key to move to the product list heading.
- Use the 3rd level heading (3) to move through the product titles in the list.
- On finding the right product, move to the quantity field and press Enter to add to basket.
It could be argued that the Tesco website is technically accessible, although you’d have to overlook the rather basic ommission of alternative text descriptions on the product images to do that convincingly. The real trouble is that it isn’t at all enjoyable to use. In fact, it’s incredibly frustrating. A process that used to take just three or four steps has now almost doubled in complexity. People are also venting similar frustration about tasks including finding products from previous orders or lists of favourites lists.
The people reporting these problems are competent computer users. They’re regular online shoppers and know their way around their chosen access technologies. If a less confident person were to tackle the same task, by using just the basic heading quick nav key for example, they’d need to hit it 29 times to reach the first product in the list!
Thinking about accessibility in isolation isn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, accessibility is absolutely vital, but it has to be part of a more considered strategy that includes usability as well. Yes, people need to be able to access information and services. But we also want to enjoy the experience whilst we’re at it. Right?
About the Author
Léonie is Director of Accessibility & Web Development at Nomensa, where she is responsible for accessibility standards, research and development. When not investigating how screen readers work with emerging technologies, Léonie is happiest cooking for friends, reading a good book, or dancing the night away.
I certainly agree that, while the Tesco site may not actually be totally inaccessible, in that it can be used to shop for their groceries, it is no longer an enjoyable site to use. The first thing I always do is book a delivery site, and whereas before I just jumped down the headings for each day and then cursored down to the time slot I wanted, pressing enter on it, I now have to go through dozens of radio buttons to find the date and time slot I want. This takes much longer. I was asked to evaluate the site by Tesco, and have given them my views, most of which are critical. I do wonder why they bothered to change the site, as some of us were also using the main site, which was not difficult to use before.
I believe this Tesco website issue clearly highlights the fact that an understanding of user behaviour is a very essential factor when implementing accessibility solutions. In addition, the fact that some users were contacted to evaluate the website and we are still having these issues raises questions about what sort of analysis was done on the results of the evaluations.
If “Every little helps”, then Tesco should remember to do the little to help the numerous users who rely on the accessibility and usability of their site.
It has been reported that when a user adds something to the basket, they are taken back to the top of the screen. With FX 3.6.6 and Jaws 11, this is not the case. I shop by finding all favourites. That process is as easy as ever using the links list. Then you can use the l for lists quick nav key or search for product list, or find navigate for an edit field or a button. I believe Window Eyes users may have problems with this as Window Eyes seems not to be able to return you to the correct place, but that it should work well with Jaws. It would be improved if more heading levels were used for sure, but that should be easily achievable. It seems that yet again, the problem is with a virtual buffer and with screen reader users not learning to do things a different way. I grant that the old site was simpler, but this one has many more features, like the ability to manage favourites as you go, view product info without losing what you’ve added so far on a page, etc. This is not the one way street that was suggested on the BCAB list.
Hi Léonie,
Thanks for the interesting post and the useful feedback.
Following the recent discussions on the BCAB discussion list around the recent changes on the Tesco website, in behalf of the RNIB Web Access Team, part of RNIB Access Consultancy Services, I’ve posted a response under one of the BCAB threads at http://www.freelists.org/post/bcab/WebbIE-web-view-was-Re-Tesco-access-site,15.
I would like to highlight just a couple of things here:
1) We have been working with Tesco over a period of months to help improve the accessibility of the new main site and access site. This work is still ongoing, despite the site gradually being made live to end users. We are confident that Tesco will positively respond to all feedback from their customers and will do their best to ensure an accessible and satisfactory user experience.
2) The RNIB Access Consultancy Services advises about pan disability accessibility, not just on the issues related to blind and partially sighted users. Where possible, we will provide advice on any potential usability issues we find as well, although this is not our main area of expertise. We are not involved in the overall design of websites but only provide advice on existing and potential accessibility issues.
Kind Regards,
Marco Ranon
Principal Web Access Consultant
RNIB Access Consultancy Services
First I would like to say thank you for all your feedback on the new grocery website. Below is the official response from Tesco.
It has been our aim for many years to ensure that all our customers have the same experience on the grocery site. Therefore we have designed the grocery site to work for all customers and no longer have a need for a separate ‘access site’ for customers using screen readers.
We have been working closely with RNIB to ensure that our grocery site meets the requirements set out in the accessibility guidelines and hope that we will achieve our goal of AA compliance.
Many of you have asked why we decided to migrate all our customers on to the new grocery site before it was AA compliant, we did this because we believed that the site was in a good enough state to shop from and the sooner we could de-commission the old site, the faster we could get on with improving the current site for all our customers.
With this in mind we made the decision that we would ensure that our access customers would be able to checkout an order and implement all the other recommendations RNIB gave us.
We asked 7 of our existing access site customers to test the new site for us and would like to thank them for their help and would like ensure them we have taken all their feedback on board and are doing our best to rectify things. Unfortunately we under estimated the frustration caused by some of the issues found.
We have an update to the site coming at the beginning of August which will implement the majority of recommendations RNIB found in their original report and fix some of the issues you have found. Fixes that do not make the release will be prioritised and put on the site ASAP.
Reading your feedback we have noticed the main issues are:-
1. When adding a product to the basket you are taken back to the top of the page and have to navigate back to where you were – We have found a fix for this and will be implemented in the August release. In the meantime this issue can be resolved by viewing the non-access site by deselecting the option in My Account, which will give you the full experience of the grocery site, without the page refreshing at each addition.
2. The number of headings that have to be navigated to actually get to the products is far too many – we are currently looking into solutions to make this aspect better
3. Delivery slots now have a table with radio buttons and when you navigate to a slot you hear repeat of information which can cause confusion. We shall be taking away the repeating of information in the release in August.
We shall continue to listen to your feedback that you give us to ensure the site works for all not just the majority.
We are currently setting up a email address specifically for accessibility issues so you can tell us the issues and how they occur so we can investigate and fix the issue. As soon as I have the email address I shall post it here.