There is no e-commerce site in Bangladesh that is fully compliant with internationally established web standards, according to a study by User Study & Experience Research Hub (Userhub).
The group of researchers who conducted the study was led by Userhub co-founder and CXO Wahid bin Ahsan. The objective of the study was to find out if e-commerce sites in Bangladesh conform to web standards under the ISO/IEC 40500:2012 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
The study focused on the prevalence of Accessibility Errors, Accessibility Alerts, and Contrast Errors, as well as HTML and CSS validation on 174 active e-commerce sites listed with the e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-CAB). The researchers randomly selected three pages from each website and tested them for the above issues using W3C recommended tools.
The results of the study showed that there were no e-commerce sites with zero errors and warnings in Bangladesh. The average prevalence of accessibility errors was 60.57, HTML errors 49.52, and CSS errors 27.16.
In a press release from Userhub, Wahid bin Ahsan said: “In order to provide a user-friendly experience, an e-commerce site needs to follow the web standards of the W3C. The web standards ensure the quality of code of a website or application.”
“Around 15% of the world population suffers from some sort of disability. If we create applications and websites while following the web standards, we ensure this population gets to be a part of the digital world,” he added.
Userhub plans to carry out a similar study on non e-CAB members in the near future.
