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An In-depth Accessibility Analysis of Top Online Shopping Websites

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Applications of Computational Intelligence in Management & Mathematics (ICCM 2022)

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics ((PROMS,volume 417))

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Abstract

Online shopping has become inevitable in the current era of the Internet. Due to the increasing number of Internet users, more and more businesses are focusing on online shopping. At the same time, customers also prefer online shopping due to the convenience and ease of use. During the website design process, factors such as attractive interface and fast access are often taken into consideration. But, the accessibility of the websites is often overlooked during the design process. Thus, an essential section of society, persons with disabilities do not get an equal opportunity while accessing the websites. This, in turn, may also affect the online shopping decisions of persons with disabilities. In this chapter, the accessibility of the top online shopping websites has been evaluated based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The websites have been classified based on accessibility into high, medium, and low accessibility. Furthermore, Karl Pearson’s coefficient of correlation among different types of problems faced by users and Spearman’s rank coefficient of correlation between the number of visits to a website and the number of problems faced by users have been calculated, and Kendall’s W test for ranking websites based on different types of problems faced by users has also been performed. The results reveal that 50% of the sites have high, 20% have medium, and 30% have low accessibility. Results of correlation analysis indicate that the problems related to the accessibility of websites are not correlated to the visits made by the users. The findings of the study can help in building an inclusive society and also provide managerial insights for the online shopping industry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Central University of Rajasthan, Ajmer, Rajasthan, India

    Nishtha Kesswani & Sanjay Kumar

Authors
  1. Nishtha Kesswani
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  2. Sanjay Kumar
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Correspondence to Nishtha Kesswani .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Electronics & Communication Engineering, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology (NERIST), Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India

    Madhusudhan Mishra

  2. Department of Computer Science, Central University of Rajasthan, Ajmer, Rajasthan, India

    Nishtha Kesswani

  3. EMLYON Business School, Écully, France

    Imene Brigui

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Kesswani, N., Kumar, S. (2023). An In-depth Accessibility Analysis of Top Online Shopping Websites. In: Mishra, M., Kesswani, N., Brigui, I. (eds) Applications of Computational Intelligence in Management & Mathematics. ICCM 2022. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 417. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25194-8_28

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